Brad's Pits

Rating: 3/10 (9 February 2008)

Now is the time to say goodbye - Goodbye. Now is the time to yeeeiild a sigh.
Ah, Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore knew how to say 'goodbye'. Keep it short and sweet.
I think it was the Bard who said that parting was such sweet sorrow. Unfortunately, he forgot to mention that it could be the longest, most tedious and lachrymose experience in the universe.
Three hours. Three wretched hours. Here is a movie paradox. It tells you that life is precious. But it takes so long about it that there's a very real chance of viewers dying before the lead character. This is a movie that invites audience participation.
Some directors are apt to over-indulge in human emotion and excessive sentimentality. Hollywood refers to this as 'schmaltz'. Here, it is as if human emotion had engorged to the size of a cosmic udder, and is being so vigorously milked that the bucket over-floweth and humanity risks drowning in sentiment.
An old bloke who is a millionaire and who has had a good life is going to die. That's sad? lucky him. he should try being homeless or living in a sink estate on social security. Those people die too, and usually a lot younger.
Death turns up in the form of a youthful naiveté with a peanut-butter fetish and a crush on the dying man's daughter. He doesn't understand life, but he apparently understands the tax system. He can hijack and re-animate a corpse, but he can't stop the main character dying.
Did somebody actually write this script? Did somebody sit down and say 'I've got a good idea'? Or perhaps Hollywood has begun sub-contracting work to mental institutions.
This is beautifully filmed, with pleasantly scored music, and contains two fine leading actors. I give it a star on each count. It is also 3 times as long as it should be and is so farcical and preposterous in concept; it ought to have been a comedy (which, in a way, it actually is).
Wallace and Gromit could have done the whole damn thing in half an hour for a fraction of the budget and still found time to catch a penguin in a milk-bottle.
Death, where is thy sting? Meet Joe Black.