Try not to insult other people's opinions!

Rating: 1/10 (3 January 2002)

Please, enough with the ridiculous assumption (for this and other films) that if one didn't like it, one must be somehow intellectual or spiritually inferior to those who did. Surely you can express your opinion about a film without maligning the intelligence of those who don't share it.

I saw Meet Joe Black in the theater when it came out, which was a grave error. By the last third of the movie I was literally banging my head on the back of the chair in frustration. I came close to walking out, but damn me, I had to see how it all turned out. At this point, that wasn't even worth the time really, because I can look back and say with certainty "who cares!". If I were Anthony Hopkins, I would have told Death to kill me now rather than living the rest of my life, if it was going to be so excruciatingly dull!
Please note that when I say that the best part is when Brad Pitt gets run over with the car and thrown through the air, it's not because I want more action in a film. Action films are by far not my favorite genre. I'll take character development over explosions any day. It's simply because the ridiculousness of that moment sums up the whole futile effort that is this film! That moment actually made me *laugh*, and not because I'm cold hearted - I've cried at many a film - but simply because like everything else in this film, it was badly done and elicited the opposite effect that it was attempting to achieve.
My dislike of the movie had nothing to do with my ability to grasp it's "subtlety". It was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Actors staring at each other with cow eyes and waiting a minute between ever line of dialogue doesn't make that dialogue any more meaningful, just spectacularly boring.

As other reviewers have noted, excising these excruciating pregnant pauses from many of the scenes might have made the film more tolerable. I definitely wish I had a fast forward button. If I had it to do all over again I would have just walked out and rented it later to watch the end and not wasted another second of my life. One other reviewer asked what else could we have been doing with our time. It's not what one does with one's time, it's whether one enjoys it or not, or actually does something productive. The three hours I wasted on Meet Joe Black were neither enjoyable nor productive. Maybe your time isn't precious to you, but mine is to me, and at the very least I could have been watching a better movie!