Defending Your Life might be defensible if it were more caustic and less cloying. But Brooks's wit is apparently on retirement pay while a newborn inspirationalism bounces forth, caterwauling, in its place.

Alas the film is a distinct disappointment, somehow lacking the ironic flair of Lost in America and substituting a rather ponderous seriousness of tone.

With such a pedigree, Defending Your Life should be a much better film than it is. For it is hard to escape the suspicion that an originally satirical intention has been sweetened in line with a national hunger for consolation about the hereafter.

By the time this Dantesque fork in the dark wood has been reached, Brooks is after tears, not laughter.