One night, after dinner, Death (Brad Pitt) appears with an offer: he'll put off "taking" Bill if, in return, Bill will introduce him to the wonders of being alive. He's also about to die from a heart attack. The film introduces Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins), a corporate tycoon on the verge of celebrating his 65th birthday. Disappointingly, that potentially-fascinating aspect of the situation is ignored by Meet Joe Black, which wastes the bulk of its three hours on a passionless romance and an absurd corporate takeover scheme. Death Takes a Holiday went to great pains to describe the horrors of a world in which there was still illness and injury, but no death.
MEET JOE BLACK FULL MOVIE MOVIE
One thing this movie ignores, however, is how the universe fares with Death on vacation. This is not a strict remake - in fact, a key subplot is eliminated entirely - but it uses the black-and-white film's central conceit: what would happen if Death decided to temporarily abandon his place in the cosmos and reside for a brief time on Earth? Meet Joe Black postulates that he might look like Brad Pitt, fall in love with a beautiful young woman, and help save a good man's company. Meet Joe Black was loosely suggested by the 1934 movie, Death Takes a Holiday, which, in turn, was based on a '20s stage play of the same name. Then, to add insult to injury, Brest never lets a scene end naturally, but keeps things going long past the point where the audience has lost interest. It wouldn't be as bad if the conversations were well-written, but most of what the characters say is sophomoric and rarely of much interest. The first, and most obvious, is that the director forces his actors to insert frequent, lengthy pauses into all dialogue (I kept wondering if he believed he was directing William Shatner). Several obvious techniques are applied to accomplish this. Somehow, Brest manages to take a script lacking the content to justify a two hour motion picture and drag it out to three. There are slow movies, slooooooooooow movies, and then there's Meet Joe Black. Brest transforms a seemingly foolproof idea into an overblown bore. Director Martin Brest, who helmed the enjoyable-but-also-too-long Scent of a Woman, is at his absolute worst here. At a hair under three hours, it's shorter than James Cameron's Titanic, yet, when it comes to pace, Joe Black is glacial. It is also one of the most tedious and bombastic. Meet Joe Black has the dubious distinction of being the longest film to date of 1998.
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