# Meet Joe Black (1998)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

"Meet Joe Black" offers definitive proof that there is indeed such a thing as too much of a good thing. Updating the venerable old chestnut "Death Takes A Holiday" may have seemed like an inspired idea and casting Brad Pitt as Death and Anthony Hopkins as his intended victim undoubtedly enhanced the project's profile at Universal Pictures, badly in need of a marketable movie after a disasterous year at the box office. Turning the movie over to director Martin Brest, however, was -- pardon the pun -- the kiss of death. As he proved with his 1992 epic "Scent of a Woman," Brest is a guy who doesn't know the meaning of the word "cut," and while "Scent" at least offered an Oscar-winning Al Pacino performance to hold the interest, "Joe" is so low-key it can't help but feel like a slender little story stretched far beyond its limits. Brest lets scene after scene ramble on and on, giving the picture a languid air that makes its three-hour running time feel more like three weeks. For everyone except the most fervent Pitt fans, this is Sominex Cinema. "Joe" gets off to a solid start, introducing Pitt as an effervescent young lawyer who wows medical student Susan Parrish (Claire Forlani) in a coffeeshop encounter. But when Susan meets what she thinks is the same man later on, he seems to have had his personality stolen. Now he's reserved, stiff and, in many ways, downright weird. That's because Death, curious about life, is using the lawyer's body as a kind of luxurious vacation home. Speaking of luxury, Death has moved in with ultra-rich communications magnate Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) -- get it? Death and Parrish? -- whose upcoming 65th birthday is destined to be his last. A deal is struck that as long as Parrish keeps Death amused and keeps his identity a secret, Parrish can enjoy a little extra time on Earth; Death, in turn, can learn what peanut butter tastes like and discover what love feels like. Most of "Joe" involves Death behaving like a child, slurping food, spinning around in an office chair and weaving from side to side as he toddles around. Seeing Pitt play infantilism is good for a few laughs at first, but it's hard to believe someone as seemingly worldly as Susan finds these traits sexy; when she begins to undress him during the big poolside love scene you're uncertain if she's going to seduce him or check his diaper. Since no Pitt movie these days is complete without him doing a misguided accent, he's allowed to tackle Jamaican patois this time out in a subplot that could easily have been dropped. But then almost everything in "Joe" is done to excess, including Thomas Newman's grandoise score, which vainly tries to make this muddled drama seem important and exciting. If nothing else, the movie is extremely well-produced and easy to look at, shot in a rich color scheme of ebony, amber and peach. And certainly there are worse ways to waste 179 minutes than looking at Pitt and the sloe-eyed Forlani, who makes Susan easily the most fascinating character in the film. But as otherworldly romances go, "Joe" pales next to the far more compelling "City of Angels," which actually had some points to make about the human condition. "Joe," in contrast, has little to say and takes far too long to say it. James Sanford

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews