Joe Who?

Rating: 5/10 (24 August 1999)

I honestly can't believe some of the reviews posted here. This film was one of the most placid, sterile, coldest cinematic texts I've ever seen. For a film like this you should create a heart first and build everything else around it. Instead Mr. Breast believes that by placing star credentials and production values above all else we the audience will be gullible enough to lovingly swallow his shallow love story. Not only that, we'll pay him 10 bucks for the privilege of doing so.
I'm not gonna bore anyone with the plot because there isn't one. It's just a pure waste of time. Seriously, in three hours you can manage to convey some quite profound feelings (Godfather, Shortcuts, Schindler's List) but Meet Joe Black didn't make me feel anything. It hoped to latch on to the same elements that made Titanic a smash hit (love story, length, evil fiancées, floppy hair) but least that had decent special effects to salvage its hollow characterisations. Even the car accident that provides Joe with a ticket to `our' world looks crap. Brad Pitt wasted his talents in this week affair, as did Hopkins. Both of them look as if they are quite unsure of why they are here in the first place. As for the characters that comprise of Hopkins family, well what I was just hoping for was that Joe would have a sudden change of heart and decide to kill em all for being so darn ungrateful. I really can't hack listening to rich white people complain about how horrid life is because they can't find `true love'. I don't think that you need a three-hour time frame in order to accomplish that. These are the very same things that annoyed me about Notting Hill, yet that film at least didn't take its self as seriously as this drivel.
As for all this talk about Claire Forlani, well yes she is one amazing looking bird but she sure can't sustain a leading female role by herself. All she did is look like a sulky rich girl drifting from room to room, suffering from major existential teenage angst. She was about as animate as my Granny's antique wardrobe. It's a case of great face but zero charisma.
You know what, this might have turned out into quite memorable film if ... In the end you have enough time to think about the emptiness of it all and feel like cursing yourself for having gone to see it in the first place.
It's not just that it's such a pointless film that annoys me. Rather more it is the actuality that it cost $90 million to subsidise this wet, soppy, nonsensical mess. If you have a great desire to see what a personification of Death may look like, I wouldn't waste my time watching this filth you may as well wait for the real thing! At least I bet it'll be more interesting this movie.