Attila the Hub and I watched Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven on ABC Sunday night. He wanted to see it because a friend of his is at ABC, and worked especially hard on this particular project.

My impressions:

1) I'd forgotten how grueling commercials can be when you don't have a good project you're working on during the breaks. Now I know why my grandmother used to knit! If I get the media job, I'll get TiVo in a hot Los Angeles minute, because I'll be watching a lot more television.

2) I love the premise of this story. I think we all have the impression that as we get older we'll get wiser, but even those who live to advanced ages may not really achieve wisdom in this lifetime. The premise that the learning process might continue past death is a charming one.

3) I have the sense that some story elements might have been cut out of the book in order to compress the story into three hours (really an hour and a half, plus commercials). As the main character meets people from his life on earth in order to absorb lessons from them, they continually tell him they've been "waiting" for him. We are left to wonder whom he might need to wait for when it's his turn to teach. My husband had a suspicion, but it isn't spelled out in the movie. Now we both have to read the book.

4) Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos put in an appearance, and it was nice to see him break out of the mafia mode for a while. Personally, of course, I kept expecting him to start cussing and beating people up—and I'm sure that's why he took the part, to avoid typecasting. He did a nice job: it was interesting to see him smile in a way that's genuinely warm. His character on Sopranos may be one of the hardest, most truly reprobate animals in the HBO cage.

5) The way I got the backstory on this, Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press keeps trying to write quiet little books, and they keep landing on the best-seller lists. After Tuesdays with Morrie, he concentrated on producing a little literary gem, but it became a best-seller as well.

This is a guy whose problems I'd really like to have.

Posted by: Attila at 01:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 410 words, total size 2 kb.