Encompassing 45 minutes of screen time, the elegant blowout provides the setting for neat resolutions of all of the film’s important narrative and thematic strands, all capped off by a gigantic fireworks display.īy taking so much time and building to the climax so methodically, Brest seems to be trying to pull off a metaphysical slow burn, one whose cumulative impact will prove moving and profound. After the party.” This is a cue for the final act, a black-tie birthday bash staged on the vast grounds of William’s stupendous waterfront estate. In line with what the young man in the coffee shop hoped for from the beginning, they fall for each other quickly and deeply, to the great consternation of William in an instance in which father truly does know best, he demands that his daughter, whom he had earlier told to become “swept away” by love, steer clear of Joe.Īfter wrestling with his impending fate and coming to accept it, William tells his otherworldly emissary that he’s ready to go, to which Joe replies, “Good. But Susan, for one, is willing to overlook all this in her determination to figure out who the mystery man is, and sure enough maneuvers him into her arms. It doesn’t help that Joe walks and talks rather like a zombie, and that he prefers peanut butter to any other food. The underhanded Drew, who has been in cahoots with the other company all along, then sets in motion an elaborate scheme by which he forces William into instant early retirement, a process spurred by the fact that the boss has privately stated that all important matters are now “up to Joe,” a man whose presence and identity no one understands. Joe’s presence induces some polite raised eyebrows among the members of William’s corporate board, which the next day convenes to consider a mega-merger that the principled William refuses to endorse. William’s other daughter, the too-eager-to-please Allison (Marcia Gay Harden), her affable but none-too-bright husband, Quince (Jeffrey Tambor), and Drew are also curious about the newcomer. First stop is a family dinner, where Susan is understandably disconcerted by the presence of the young man who charmed her in the coffee shop, and even more unnerved by the fact that he doesn’t behave as though he were the same guy. Thus begins a peculiar relationship in which the dazzlingly blond Joe Black follows the powerful William on all his rounds. In the communications baron’s plush library, the visitor, who goes by the name of Joe Black, informs the older man, a widower whom he has chosen for his exceptional character, that he can buy some time if he will act as his guide to all things earthly. In short order, the voice materializes to the mystified William in the guise of the fellow from the coffee shop. At the same time, his young physician daughter, Susan (Claire Forlani), who is halfheartedly involved with her father’s ambitious second-in-command, Drew (Jake Weber), has a memorable chance encounter in a coffee shop with a dashing young man (Brad Pitt) who, immediately after, is hit and killed by speeding cars.
With his 65th birthday fast approaching, New York media tycoon William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) begins hearing a strange, disembodied voice, and shortly suffers a heart seizure while being spoken to so mysteriously. No matter the new film’s failings, its inventions can represent only improvements, as the Leisen picture, itself adapted from a 1920s play, now comes off as deadly dull. Brest, who began mulling the project seriously more than 15 years ago, and his writers have taken just the central premise - of Death assuming human form for a few days to get a taste of what life is like, and falling in love along the way - and spun it in different, much more detailed ways. The uncharitable could make mileage of the issue that the film upon which “Meet Joe Black” is based, Mitchell Leisen’s 1934 Paramount release “Death Takes a Holiday,” ran just 78 minutes, except for the fact that the new picture isn’t a remake in any meaningful sense. Rarely has there been a film with so little justification for such a marathon running time much of the problem stems from the dialogue direction, which often has the actors pausing significantly for many seconds between lines.
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Here, he pushes his luck too far by extending a slim conceit to a full three hours. Martin Brest skated on thin ice but got away with it, at least with moviegoers, when he stretched his last film, “Scent of a Woman,” out to 157 minutes.