Far too long and overly serious

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2016)

Death takes the body of a dead man (Brad Pitt) and calls himself Joe Black. He gets a rich older man (Anthony Hopkins) to teach him about life (for what reason I've forgotten). He also falls in love the man's beautiful daughter (Claire Forlani).
I'm not gloating when I say I saw this up a theatre in 1998. The reviews were negative and the totally ridiculous 3 hour length gave me pause but I liked the cast and it SOUNDED interesting. What I got was an overly serious, slow-moving and frankly boring movie. There are a few (VERY few) good moments her and there but they're totally lost in this boring, sleep-inducing mess. The main problem is the length. This did not need to run three solid hours. I remember at the two hour mark quite a few people walked out of the theatre I saw it in. I can't blame them. I was thinking of joining them but decided to stick it out because I was mildly interested in how it would end. The problem is it had THREE different endings--all were bad and dull. It's a real shame because there's a really good two hour movie here screaming to get out. A pointless waste of celluloid.