Meet Joe Black/Möt Joe Black

It only seems like eternity

A wealthy businessman, Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) is approaching his 65th birthday, and his older daughter Allison (Marcia Gay Harden) is adding the final touches to a spectacular birthday party. Parrish is about to sign a deal merging his communications company with an another, bigger company and is about to meet its owner. His helicopter arrives and he sets off for the meeting with his younger daughter Susan (Claire Forlani), his second-in command Drew (Jake Weber) who is dating Susan, and Allison's husband Quince (Jeffrey Tambor). During the flight, Parrish quizzes Susan about her feelings for Drew - he is worried that there is no passion in their relationship. His wish is that she meets a man for whom she feels as Parrish did for his late wife, and that she should be open to the chance of meeting such a man. "Who knows where lightning will strike ?", muses Parrish.

Later that day, Susan (who is a doctor in a city hospital) is in a coffee shop where a young man (Brad Pitt) strikes up a conversation with Susan who finds herself attracted to him. As they leave the coffee shop, both Susan and the man cast backward glances at each but walk off. As the man is crossing the road, however, he is hit by a car.

Meanwhile, Parrish has been troubled by a voice in his head. The voice is telling him 'Yes' but Parrish does not know what it signifies. He also has chest pains which are worrying him. That evening, while the family are at dinner, Parrish hears the same voice. He follows it to his library where it is revealed to him that Death has come to take him. However, Death has a proposition for him. Parrish will be allowed some more time among the living if Death (who has taken the form of the young man killed in the auto accident) can accompany him and experience life as it is perceived by humans. Parrish agrees and introduces his new companion as Joe Black.

The reason Death has picked Bill Parrish as his guide to human experience is not simply because Parrish is a good and wise man, but also because Parrish has spoken so movingly about the importance and pleasure of love. It is Death's (or Joe Black's) pursuit and discovery of love that is the pre-occupation of the film. The complication for Parrish is that Death seems have taken an interest in Susan, a relationship that can only result in unhappiness for his daughter.

This movie is a remake of Death takes a Holiday, and it could easily be called Death gets a hard-on...eventually. If such a characterisation seems crude, it sums up the storytelling ambition of this movie. Anyone who intends to go to this movie in the hope of seeing a philosophical exploration of life and death, or even a touching love story should stop right now. This movie is not about that. Instead, it is a very long star vehicle for Brad Pitt, and not a terribly good one at that.

There are major flaws in this movie. The first is the unbalanced nature of the script. Since Death has inhabited a body to interact with humanity, he wants to act like other humans. So we see Death learn how to eat, how to make conversation, how to dress, etc. Despite the fact that Death has existed for aeons, and displays flashes of omnipotence, he seems to know precious little about human behaviour (in fact, he acts a lot like Data in Star Trek). All these scenes are played for laughs, which jars against the general tone of the movie. It doesn't help that Brad Pitt adopts the same voice as Hal in 2001:A Space Odyssey, with one unintentionally hilarious exception. In the movie, people who encounter Death hear his voice with a similar accent to their own. A prolonged and supposedly moving encounter with a dying Jamaican woman gives Pitt a chance to adopt a creditable but unintentionally comic Caribbean accent, which elicited guffaws of laughter from the audience at the showing I attended.

The second flaw is the completely unconvincing relationship between Joe Black and Susan. Since we, the audience, know that the 'real' Joe Black, with whom Susan has fallen in love, is already dead, it is never clear what she sees in the 'new' Black, since he has no personality, except that of a vacant-eyed idiot. Well, there is one reason. If you are the Grim Reaper, and you want to date a beautiful woman, be sure to come back in a Brad Pitt-shaped form. It seems to work a treat.

Unfortunately, Claire Forlani has little to do as Susan, other than look absolutely gorgeous and tremble her lower lip every so often. It's not that she can't act - it's just that she has so little to do. It's a sure sign of laziness that, rather than bother construct decent characters, Black's competition for Susan's heart, Drew, is drawn as a one-dimensional crudely drawn caricature of yuppie scum. The real mystery is why Susan ever went out with him.

There is one very good reason for sitting through 3 hours of this stuff: Anthony Hopkins. I have to say I have always thought Silence Of the Lambs was an overrated movie; a good movie but undeserving of the plaudits it received. However, it did propel Anthony Hopkins into the limelight, and for that alone, I shall be grateful. His Bill Parrish perfectly captures the demeanour and emotions of a man who is trying to come to terms with his life and his legacy. He is torn between pride at his achievements and sadness at the prospect of parting from his beloved family. It's a pity that the rest of the production dilutes the impact of his performance.

Some of the shortcomings are glaringly obvious. For instance, even though it is the intensity of his feelings for his dead wife that initially attracts the attention of Death, Parrish never asks about her or wonders if he will meet her in the next life. In fact, one can't help feeling that the makers of this movie figured that 3 hours of Brad Pitt would be enough. It doesn't help that director and producer Martin Brest (Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman) composes each scene like a fashion shoot, and the camera lingers on Brad in his every scene on the presumed assumption that longer means better. It doesn't.

Directed and produced by Martin Brest.

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