An over-produced dime store novel

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2019)

This movie is cheating as far as aesthetics and production goes: the setting, the actors, wardrobe, music-- they're all great. Your movie is likely going to enchant some viewers with one of these aspects if not for another.
But for those of us who can look past those aspects, my god is this one hokey, stupid, over-extended premise.
Death decides to take the form of the most handsome young white man he can find and go visit one of the richest old white dudes he can find to learn about the human experience of life. I'm so glad everyone's white and rich so as not to taint the glorious view he walks away from this experience with. Can you imagine if he'd taken on any other person to experience life through? A lower class person of color in America? Anyone in a third world country? He'd have probably gone on the biggest killing spree of all time.
The only people of color in this entire movie are two black women from Africa, which Death effortlessly switches dialects to, and who both know of Death through their... not-so-tactfully, super-cliche ways.
If you're anything like me, you eyed this movie and said yourself "Anthony Hopkins? Brad Pitt? A Thomas Newman soundtrack? Sign me up!"
Unless you're a rich person fearing death, or someone who wants to fall in love with Brad Pitt, or just someone who's completely oblivious to class warfare the concentration of wealth, skip this.
Read the synopsis and the main character's name, and tell me you don't know how it ends.