Could have been charming and light  instead it's mostly tiresome, overlong and occasionally terrible

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2002)

Media magnate William Parrish is approaching his 65th birthday. While dealing with his business problems he advises his youngest daughter Susan that she must find true love. She meets a young man in a coffee shop and falls for his charms but leaves without him. When the young man is hit by a bus and killed, Death decides to use his body to visit earth. He postpones the death of Parrish in return for experiencing life. However his influence causes an impact on Parrish's business and on his daughter.
This is a rework of 1934's `Death Takes a Holiday' - four writers worked tirelessly to take that short charmer and spin it into a ponderous three hour slog. The story is simple enough - Death comes to earth, falls in love, makes friends, is a fish out of water but must eventually go back' - however it's seriously stretched and delivered in very slow chunks. The various strands (the business confrontation, the romance etc) don't sit well together and it's like the writers all took turns rather than working together. At the start it is quite charming, but the longer it goes on, the less you care and the less charming it becomes.
Why did it have to be so long? There are so many elements of the story that could have been trimmed down. So many scenes could have been told in a shorter time or removed totally. It feels like nothing they shot ended up on the cutting room floor. For example, Pitt shares several scenes (total about 10 minutes) with an elderly Jamaican woman, these scenes don't add anything to the film: more than that they are terrible - Pitt does a horrible, horrible patwa accent. Surely the editor should have removed these on quality alone!
If this had been good then it wouldn't matter if it was so long - but there's only enough to last for 2 hours at most. That's 60 minutes worth of filler that could have been lost. The performances are mixed, but are mainly as heavy and unwieldy as the film itself. Pitt starts well - his human' role is really charming and I thought that he was already Death and thought he'd be that way for the whole film. However when he becomes death he is totally flat and lifeless - obviously that's how Death would be, but it makes him really dull and wastes the charm that has made him a star. His Jamaican accent is absolutely terrible and just shows he has no judgement. Forlani holds her own well beside an experienced cast but the romance between her and death is unbelievable due to Pitt's stony performance. Hopkins is good throughout and shows Pitt up to be a star rather than an actor. The support is mostly good - but that old Jamaican lady has got to go!
The film is far too long - at one point I thought it was winding up and that the end must be 10 minutes away - it was winding up (and did what I thought it would) but instead of 10 minutes it took 45! Such luxurious running times should only be permitted to films that can sustain them.
Overall this could have been a charming little film. Instead it buries that charm in a three hour running time that it can't sustain. I liked it but I wished it would end after the first 120 minutes. Somewhere out there - it is still going!