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'Farewell Party' clever, but lacks consistency

Mini-review: ‘The Farewell Party'

Imagine the cast of “Cocoon” creating a musical black comedy about the joys of elderly euthanasia. In Hebrew.

That comes close to describing “The Farewell Party,” an edgy, envelope-pushing work of tonal inconsistency written and directed by Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit.

It stars Israeli actor Ze'ev Ravach as Yehezkel, an inventor living in a Jerusalem retirement home with his wife Levana (Levana Finkelstein), an Alzheimer's patient.

When an elderly friend begs Yehezkel to help put her suffering husband out of his misery, Yehezkel creates a machine that enables a person to push a button and self-inject poison into the blood stream.

Soon, others at the retirement home hear about Yehezkel's marvelous invention and demand it for their loved ones in the agonizing throes of terminal illnesses.

He is more than willing. Not Levana, who condemns his participation in suicide-assistance as immoral and illegal.

So, it becomes the mission of Yehezkel and “The Farewell Party” to persuade her (and us, the viewers) to the kinder, gentler way of allowing the dying to check out on their own terms with dignity.

This movie offers serious, empathetic moments (“I'm disappearing!” Levana laments after an Alzheimer's episode) mixed with goofy sitcom jokes and a single bizarre musical number in which the characters sing about going to “Neverland” — even corpses warbling as the sheets are pulled over their bodies.

An interesting experiment, “The Farewell Party” never finds the right balance of light comedy and heavy drama to unify and electrify the story's disparate elements.

“The Farewell Party” opens at the Music Box in Chicago and the Renaissance Place in Highland Park. Not rated. 95 minutes. ★ ★ ½

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