If you could, would you sign up to learn the day of your death? That’s the premise behind Running on Empty, a self-proclaimed romantic comedy that delivers very little in the way of romance and only so-so in the way of comedy. Despite a pretty clever premise and great setup: our protagonist, Mortimer (Keir Gilchrist), who just so happens to be a mortician, has less than a year to live, while his fiancée Nicole (Francesca Eastwood) has a whole life ahead of her, the movie falters where it should soar and leaves you feeling like the end couldn’t have come at a better time.
Message-wise, the movie goes for the obvious: live your life to the fullest. What else are you to do when you don’t have that much of it? The problem is not in the execution, but in very bland dialogue that never seems to hit as hard as the movie wants it to. Sure, we all feel what Mortimer is feeling, in an abstract sense, but we never actually get there emotionally. Part of it is that the movie relies on a very dry sense of humor that seems at odds with the message the movie is trying to send and that Gilchrist nails almost too well. At times, it almost makes you want to shake him. Mortimer, you’re dying! Emote something.
He doesn’t, and the movie’s emotional heavy lifting is left to Kate (Lucy Hale), who actually seems like she’s trying at every moment she’s on screen. If it weren’t for her, the movie about a man who is about to die would feel emotionless, but Hale injects the humor and the care into the role that we require for Running on Empty to almost feel like a movie about how to savor the time you have left, even if it’s not as much as you might have wanted it to be. Philosophical questions are easier to consider when you care about the characters.
Sadly, too much time is still lost in the weird detours where Mortimer seems to be speaking almost to the camera, or when Simon (Rhys Coiro), a scary pimp who I won’t even take the time to explain pops up from time to time to try to get money from Mort. There are some semi-good moments involving Mort’s creepy uncle Barry (Jim Gaffigan), but overall, the movie feels like a collection of unfortunate events that cannot actually be made to feel interesting because Mortimer himself isn’t. And it’s not like most of what’s happening to him isn’t on him, anyway. He’s actively making bad decisions.
So, sure, life kind of sucks for Mortimer. He’s going to die soon, and his attempts at savoring whatever is left of his life keep going from bad to worse during the 91-minute run-time of Running on Empty. But for that to make any sort of impact on us as viewers, we would have to care about Mortimer, and we just don’t. That means the movie’s inevitable conclusion just feels like the obvious next step, instead of an emotional gut-punch. It is what it is. The movie is over. We move on. Oh, and we must cherish life. I, personally, would never want to know the day of my death. Of that, I’m sure.
Running on Empty is in theaters now.
