Comedy is perhaps the hardest kind of film to make. As the great comic W.C. Fields was about to make his transition, he is rumored to have said “Dying is easy... comedy is hard.” Satiric comedy raises that degree of difficulty to Olympian heights. Add in a sweet romantic story line as well. Blend with finesse, love and a genuine love of humanity and voila: Expiration Date magically appears!

The film, produced and directed with style, elegance, compassion, wit and grace by Seattle filmmaker Rick Stevenson, is an absolute delight from start to finish.

Expiration Date tells the wonderfully wacky story of Charlie Silvercloud III, whose father and grandfather unexpectedly and tragically “expired” on their 25th birthdays, both times at the hands (tires)? of runaway milk trucks! Charlie is fast approaching his own 25th and, convinced that his family is cursed, believes that nothing will protect him from a similar fate. Accordingly, he runs from even a glimpse of someone carrying a milk carton and shops very diligently for an appropriate vessel for his body and for just the right burial plot. As the fates would have it, however, he keeps running into the same young woman who seems equally determined to outbid him for everything he sets his sights on. He can’t even seem to get his life together for his death. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

What’s a poor, cursed fellow supposed to do? Just lay down in front of a dairy farm and wait for the inevitable? Rob a bank so you can at least retain the dignity of being able to plan for your own demise? After all, by the time the law gets you, the Silvercloud curse will have eliminated you anyway. Or...

Maybe... In planning for your death, you find someone who teaches you how wonderful life can really be.

To say more about the film itself would deprive you of the sheer fun and warm discovery that the film reveals as Charlie careens toward that 25th milestone.

As mentioned earlier, mixing comedy, satire and romance is an amazingly courageous journey for a filmmaker to embark upon. Stevenson has an obvious love and respect for his characters and his compassion infuses every scene in the film. It’s just not possible to encounter these off-the-wall characters and not be totally enchanted by both them and the increasingly wild and outrageous situations in which they find themselves.

Expiration Date is opening in cities around the country and I strongly recommend that you see it when it opens near you. You can get more details at www.expirationdatethemovie.com. It’s films like these that remind us how wonderful movies can be when they show us who we are as humanity when we function at our very best. I loved this film and I believe that you will, too.

Stephen Simon has produced such films as “Somewhere In Time” and “What Dreams May Come” and recently produced and directed the film version of “Conversations With God.” He also co-founded www.Spiritualcinemacircle.com.