All That Time And Such A Lackluster Effort

Rating: 2/10 (24 February 2017)

Very few films are given the opportunity to clock in at a three-hour runtime. When one does, like "Meet Joe Black", it's a shame that it only uses the gift of time to completely fritter away any semblance of engaging plot or characters.
For a basic plot summary, "Meet Joe Black" tells the story of William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins), who is visited by the entity of Death taking the body of the recently deceased Joe Black (Brad Pitt). Death makes a deal with Parrish that he'll belay that impending heart attack as long as Bill will allow him to stay in the real world. Bill's daughter Susan (Claire Forlani) quickly becomes enchanted by Mr. Black, yet remains at a distance because of the strangeness of the entire ordeal.
This is a metaphor film, first and foremost. The metaphor is "death is literally in the room with you", and how does Bill Parrish react to that. Sadly, though, so much of the film is awkward and stunted because it just doesn't make sense that Joe Black could just show up out of nowhere. That is the huge hole in this story that destabilizes everything around it. I'm always up for a little suspension of disbelief when I go to the movies, but this stretched it a bit too far. For this whole thing to work, there needed to be some explanation for who or what Joe Black was, and the rules were clearly set against that. What if Black would have been a ghost who only appeared to Parrish? Might that have worked better? Something...anything...besides having Black show up out of nowhere and have the issue never get resolved.
Secondly, this is very much a character film in the sense that if deep, emotional characters weren't established the whole thing was going to collapse. That is exactly what transpired. Maybe this film was just a "product of its times" (1998), although I hate using that excuse for any film. Perhaps, though, Hopkins as "important business man" during the late 90s was more relatable to audiences and Pitt in an exquisite suit wooing a doe-eyed Forlani was just what viewers expected from those characters. Even if it "played better" during its day, though, it still isn't quality character development by any means.
Finally, we get to the film's length. At three hours long, this film had all the time it needed to flesh characters and explore every plot nuance. Instead, it just kind of saunters along until the very end, when some stirring music and fireworks are supposed to provide the emotional context that three hours of runtime could not.
Thus, I was extremely disappointed in "Meet Joe Black" and really found myself a bit angered at how a film given so much "room to play with" could screw it up so bad. It turns an interesting concept into tedium and turns great actors into bores. Not a great recipe for any film, much less one that plays everything so serious and full of gravitas.