Is Your Time Really That Valuable?

Rating: 10/10 (14 October 2001)

So many people have complained about the length of this movie. What were all these people going to do with the `offending' 45 minutes? Save the world? Find a cure for cancer--or even bunions?
This movie doesn't have the pacing of Moesha (whom I admire) but why should it? To use a sports analogy, it's more like a baseball than football or basketball. It unravels at its own pace. It provides respite, not competition, to our chaotic environs.
I have had the opportunity to observe a few of the Robert Parishes of the world. They are much more complicated men than how they are portrayed in Hollywood projects. This movie daringly casts a wealthy man as a deeply moral rather than corrupt.
Anthony Hopkins trumpets why life is to be treasured and death despised. Why the person for you might NOT be the one right under your nose, but rather the person you have yet to really meet. That it's worth it to wait for the special somebody who makes your life more vibrant and you a better person to boot. In a world fascinated with the macabre and marketed to the ordinary, such messages are sorely needed.
Being a member of the `Y' chromosome sex, I cannot truly be a Brad Pitt fan. But I must say he did a fine job and had great chemistry with the rest of the cast, all of whom were first-rate. And that death chose to experience life through the body of a morally conscious businessman (instead of a rock star) shows where this movie's values reside.
Meet Joe Black was a brave and inspired movie. I hope at least some give it another shot.