Nothing Lasts Forever
Nothing Lasts Forever
PG | 06 September 1984 (USA)
Nothing Lasts Forever Trailers

An artist fails a test and is required to direct traffic in New York City's Holland Tunnel. He winds up falling in love with a beautiful woman, who takes him to the moon on a Lunar Cruiser.

Reviews
Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Wizard-8 I had wanted to see this movie for years, but until just recently it was next to impossible to see, never getting an official release. But it finally popped on TV, and I made sure to record and watch it. After seeing it, I can only say, "Strange... very strange..." Note that I didn't say it's an *awful* movie. The production design is very good, managing to capture the look and feel of movies made forty or so years earlier. And it's so offbeat that you can't help but be curious enough to stick with it in order to see how things will work out. But the problem is that the movie concentrates more on being strange than working to have strong characters and a solid story. Eventually I got somewhat tired of the movie. But if you are a fan of strange major Hollywood studio movies, it is definitely a must see. And it's unlikely a movie like this would get made today by a major Hollywood studio, so you might want to grab the chance to see this rarity.
bregund What is it about the 1980s and really bad films? This cinematic misfire manages to ignore all the implied requirements of good filmmaking such as plot, decent acting, a cohesive storyline, and believable characters. The main problem with this movie is that it doesn't know what it wants to be: is it a dystopian future, a satire about consumerism, an allegory about capitalism, a fractured romance, a cautionary fable about oppressive government oversight, a musical? It tries and fails to be any of these things. Dan Akroyd appears for about two minutes of welcome comic relief. Bill Murray's role is a little more substantial, but not enough to rise above the cheap special effects or ultimate pointlessness of the trip to the moon so the seniors can buy things. See, when you push satire on an audience, you need to nurture relatable elements and draw them as broad allegories with which the viewer can connect; excellent writing can accomplish this, even with the obviously limited budget of a film like this; Terry Gilliam knows how to do this with films such as Brazil, my go-to example for an effective presentation of dystopia. We can connect with Sam because he's caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare. In Nothing Lasts Forever, we're given a never-ending parade of disconnected elements that don't form a cohesive whole or relate to anything. On top of all that, Zach Galligan's limited range renders an unconvincing hero, one who, by the way, doesn't learn anything other than how to play the piano. Yes, you read that right, that's the whole point of this film. He learns to play the piano.I had never heard of this film until I saw it on TV last night. Someone rightfully decided to bury this piece of junk, and it should have stayed buried. It's not the worst film ever made, but it's hard to imagine that, somewhere along the line, the people who worked on it didn't stop to realize they were laboring over mediocrity.
drrap Since a version of this film was "leaked" - if that's the right term -- to YouTube a few days ago, it's had a second life worthy of the film's own protagonist, liberated from a job yelling at bad drivers in the Holland Tunnel to a bravura performance at Carnegie Hall. There have been many evocative or pastiche films of the classic era -- Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, or Gary Ross's Pleasantville -- but none has more vividly, sweetly, and yet ironically invoked the magic of the movies as has this film. Don't be distracted by the Dan Ackroyd or Bill Murray cameos (fun as they are): keep your eye on the veterans, who've been in more films than you can count, and who bring their considerable powers to bear here: Sam Jaffe (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bedknobs and Broomsticks); Paul Rogers (Billy Budd, The Homecoming) and the incomparable Imogene Coca, all part of a secret underground league of New York artists who seek to aid any who will give their all, unreservedly, to the cause of art. This film deserves an immediate DVD/BluRay release -- one can only imagine how richly it will shine -- and shame on MGM, Turner, Warner, and all who have kept this gem in their dark, dim, Gollum-like cavern of oblivion.
Joseph Sylvers Zach Galligan of Gremlins fame, stars in this strange lost film, from a former SNL writer, Tim Schiller, in the 80's. This was produced by Lorne Micheals, and features cameos from Dan Akroyd as a Holland Tunnel inspector (who uses the only instance of profanity, this movie is PG) and Bill Murray as the villainous Captain of an interstellar bus which transports the elderly to the moon. Galligan is a young man whose been abroad for years, and returned home only to find that the New York Port Authority has seized control of the city, due to traffic problems. Galligan is a naive but kindly upstart who knows only that he wants to be an artist. After failing the mandatory "art test" used to determine, who is an artist and who isn't, he is forced to work at the Holland Tunnel with Akroyd, but not for too long, as he meets a fellow artist, falls in love and is taken through a short montage of the new york art world. The setting is essentially timeless, at one point, it suggests the thirties, at another they mention the 50's as part of the past, and at one brief moment, there's a strong hint of 80's, but the film is shot in black and white mostly, and made to resemble a science fiction from an earlyish period from the last century, 30's, 40's??? The plot takes a few turns from here which are surprising and fantastical and not to give away too much, but unfortunately since this movie has NEVER been released on home video or DVD(and doesn't seem likely too), I'll give a way a little more of what's to come...New York as you know it may be an illusion, the homeless are the secret masters of the city and possibly more, and the elderly have been taking routine bus trips to the moon since the 50's, they have chips in their heads which make them say "Miami" every time they even think the word "Moon", so they can't tell anyone. All of these plot elements are told with a matter of factness and a touching sweetness, at no point does this film become cynical, mean, perverse, or pretentious (not something most films as rare and surreal as this can claim). Others have rightly compared it to both Terry Gilliam and Woodey Allen at their most fanciful, but there's a sweetness to this, which gives it a charm all of its own. It's completely unique, very clever, and unusually heartwarming. See it by any means necessary, and as the secret society of bums commands,"Fear not, love all".