''This Is My Life'' is a 1992 American comedy-drama film that marked the directorial debut of screenwriter

Nora Ephron Nora Ephron ( ; May 19, 1941 – June 26, 2012) was an American journalist, writer, and filmmaker. She is best known for her romantic comedy films and was nominated three times for the Writers Guild of America Award and the Academy Award for ...

. The screenplay, written by Ephron and her sister,

Delia Ephron Delia Ephron ( ; born July 12, 1944) is an American bestselling author, screenwriter, and playwright. Life and career Ephron was born in New York City, the second eldest of four daughters of screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron. Her movies i ...

, is based on the book, ''This Is Your Life'', by

Meg Wolitzer Meg Wolitzer (born May 28, 1959) is an American novelist, known for '' The Wife'', ''The Ten-Year Nap'', ''The Uncoupling,'' ''The Interestings'', and ''The Female Persuasion.'' She works as an instructor in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southa ...

Plot

Dottie Ingels works at a

cosmetics Cosmetics are constituted mixtures of chemical compounds derived from either natural sources, or synthetically created ones. Cosmetics have various purposes. Those designed for personal care and skin care can be used to cleanse or protect ...

counter but aspires to be a stand-up comedian. Ingels' Aunt Harriet dies and leaves the family her home in Queens, which Ingels then sells to move to an apartment in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. Ingels' comedy career starts to take off with the help of her agent, Arnold Moss and Moss's assistant, Claudia Curtis. Ingels' children, Erica and Opal get angry at Dottie because they hardly ever see her. Erica and Opal then run away to find their father upstate in Albany, whom Opal doesn't even remember, being only 1 or 2 years old when he left them.

Cast

Production

The film was at

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...

but was put into turnaround in 1990. Ephron allegedly asked

Jon Peters John Peters (born June 2, 1945) is an American film producer and former hairdresser. Early life Peters was born on June 2, 1945 in Van Nuys, California. Peters is of Cherokee (father) and Italian (mother) descent. While growing up in a rough ne ...

if he had read the script who answered that "I've made over 60 movies. I don't have to read a script to know whether it works or not." The character portrayed by Aykroyd, Arnold Moss, is based on the famous New York talent agent

Sam Cohn Samuel Charles Cohn (May 11, 1929 – May 6, 2009) was an American talent agent at International Creative Management, a firm he helped create, in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Cohn has been described as one of the most powerful a ...

, and has some of the eccentricities for which Cohn was known, such as a habit of eating paper.

Soundtrack

The film's

soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack ...

was performed by Carly Simon and released on

Qwest Records Qwest Records is the American record label started by Quincy Jones in 1980 as a joint venture with Warner Bros. Records, and owned by Warner Music Group, although Jones was still under contract with A&M Records through 1981. George Benson's 198 ...

. Although the album failed to chart, the single " Love of My Life" reached No. 16 on the '' Billboard''

Adult Contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...

chart.

Reception

''This Is My Life'' was met with lukewarm critical responses. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, it has an approval of 36% rating based on reviews from 14 critics, with an average rating of 5.5/10. Roger Ebert of the

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...

gave it 3 out of 4. Owen Gleiberman of

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cu ...

gave it a C+. In 2020, David Sims of

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

called it "the forgotten gem in Ephron’s filmmaking career".

Home media

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

released the film on DVD-R in 2012 as part of its Fox Cinema Archives line.

Sources

* LeVasseur, Andrea
This Is My Life
. Allmovie.

References

External links

* * * 1992 films 1992 comedy-drama films American comedy-drama films Films set in New York City 1992 directorial debut films 20th Century Fox films Films directed by Nora Ephron Films produced by Lynda Obst Films with screenplays by Nora Ephron Films about sisters Films about mother–daughter relationships Films about comedians Films about parenting 1990s English-language films 1990s American films {{1990s-comedy-drama-film-stub