A lightweight black comedy about the American obsession with death, which was examined decades earlier with sharper and funnier humour in Send Me No Flowers. This has a couple of good chuckles, but is mostly pretty weak. Daniels takes the Rock Hudson part as the young executive who sees his best friend keel over with a heart attack and panics himself into thinking he's about to follow suit. Covering himself with more tubes and plastic than a hospital operating theatre, he can no longer think about making love to his wife, getting on with his job or taking care of his children: he is preoccupied with 'checking out'. Daniels lacks the controlled panic of the hypochondriac and director David Leland over-paces it all, injecting it with shots from wide-angle lenses to emphasise its surreal and comic qualities. Chances are you'll fall asleep before Daniels comes to his senses.

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