Film Review: Meet Joe Black (1998) D-

Date Viewed: 6/22/07
Venue: HDNet

Sometimes a movie comes along that defies the very meaning of 'motion picture.' A stillborn, inert film that goes nowhere and does nothing. Meet Joe Black is just such a movie.

Death (Brad Pitt) takes human form and pays a visit to mega-rich media mogul William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) and keeps him alive to guide Death around life on Earth. We get to meet Parrish's daughters (Marcia Gay Harden and the chick from Mallrats) and his corporate lackey (Jake Weber). While sampling the details of human life (peanut butter, is apparently a Death-fave), Death discovers love, and falls skull over calcaneus for Mallrats girl (Claire Forlani), much to daddy's dismay.

As usual, there's more to it than that (a lot more, considering a nearly three-hour run-time), but absolutely none of it is interesting in the least. It's surprising that a film about Death is so successful in making Death so boring. He's a blank slate, devoid of anything except Brad Pitt's looks. He's not even quirky, or odd (like Star Trek's Q, learning to be human), he's just, well, weird. So weird that I don't buy Ms. Mallrats falling for him, despite his looking like Brad Pitt.

Also strange is that Parrish never seems to want know anything about how Death operates. How does he get around? Does he have any other special powers? What's it like to be Death? Is anyone else filling in while Death discovers the joys of peanut butter? Nope. The only special thing we see Death do is talk Calypso with some Jamaican lady in a hospital. That's his special skill, talking Rasta.

The main culprit here is a staggering lack of conflict. Death has no agenda, no set timetable, he just wants to check things out. Corporate lackey tries to take the company away from Parrish, Parrish doesn't care too much. Only when Parrish opposes Death's love for his daughter is there any sort of tangible conflict, and by then, we're two-plus hours in and not caring anymore.

In the end, Meet Joe Black just sits there, staring back at the audience, waiting for applause. Didn't you enjoy the slow pacing? The insubstantial character development? The corporate chicanery that no one seemed to care too much about? How about the love story? Girl shagged a Brad Pitt robot, that was good, right? To hell with this movie.