A trite 3 hour butt killer

Rating: 1/10 (16 November 1998)

If someone told me that I'd be wasting not only four bucks, but three hours of my life, sitting in the most uncomfortable of places as a witness to one of THE most boring love stories of all time, I would NOT have gone to see "Meet Joe Black." Or, as I like to call it, "Dramatic Long Pause." Don't get me wrong, I think Clair and Brad are fabulous actors, and I *love* Anthony Hopkins. But after about ten or fifteen minutes, I began to notice that every . . . . character . . . . took . . . . an awfully . . . . long . . . time . . . to finish . . . their . . . . sentences. . . . It was horrid, like somehow William Shatner infiltrated the rehearsal sessions and table reads, brainwashing Clair, Brad, and Anthony into reading their lines as slowly as possible, as if to accrue more screen time. The only redeeming characters were Allison and Quince (played by the talented Jeffrey Tambor,) and their story lines were not given the full attention that they should have been. If I ever earn the esteemed privilege of having one of my screenplays made into a movie, someone PLEASE kill me if it turns out anything like "Dramatic Long Pause." Its script was not penned by one, or two, but FOUR, count `em, FOUR individuals. All of whom seemed to be oblivious to the concept of interesting dialogue. Even in the few scenes that would be worth fast forwarding to, should you choose to rent this, the three main characters are given so many BAD lines in between their GOOD lines, it's not redeemable.