Meet Joe Black (1998)
Directed by Martin Brest
Bill Parrish has it all - success, wealth and power. Days before his 65th birthday, he receives a visit from a mysterious stranger, Joe Black, who soon reveals himself as Death. In exchange for extra time, Bill agrees to serve as Joe's earthly guide. But will he regret his choice when Joe unexpectedly falls in love with Bill's beautiful daughter Susan?
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What critics compared Meet Joe Black to
Thereafter, "Meet Joe Black" takes a decidedly less cerebral tack than its predecessor, at times bearing a closer resemblance to both the recent "City of Angels" and John Carpenter's 1984 film "Starman."
…gamers as virgins who still live with their parents), references “Meet Joe Black” more explicitly than it does Microsoft or Metroid, and feels generally uncomfortable with the fact that video games have gone mainstream — a fact that would seem to be affirmed by this movie’s very existence.
Some characters just crossing the street are smacked out of existence with the same stinging swiftness that brutally befell Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black .
They seem to have been inspired by films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Meet Joe Black, glossy, melancholy epic weepies about time and mortality.
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Clocking in at three hours (the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday, on which this is loosely based, was a trim 78 minutes), Meet Joe Black is a lingering demise indeed, prettified and devoid of much sting.
What's particularly irritating is that "Meet Joe Black" does have an interesting story germ, which has made for two good movies already 1934's "Death Takes a Holiday" and a 1971 made-for-TV remake.
Loosely based on Death Takes a Holiday, an engaging, if stagy, 1934 contraption starring Fredric March (and all of 78 minutes long), Meet Joe Black is sometimes clever and enjoyable, even touching, yet too often the film makes you feel as if you're in Sunday school.
Meet Joe Black was loosely suggested by the 1934 movie, Death Takes a Holiday, which, in turn, was based on a '20s stage play of the same name.
The story of Meet Joe Black, penned by Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno and based on the 1934 classic Death Takes A Holiday, is not epic in any way.
The rest of the movie, a remake of the 1934 classic "Death Takes a Holiday," doesn't have much going for it either.
Later, after receiving some unsolicited advice from a Christ-like bar rat at his local watering hole, Stu will get “Meet Joe Black”-ed by two different cars after drunkenly crashing that same motorcycle, only to be saved by a life-altering vision of the Virgin Mary.
6 Underground is a popped-bottle bacchanal of bad taste in which people ping-pong of Porsches, pillars and pavement, like the death scene in Meet Joe Black transplanted into Vice City and looped again and again and again.
And in a film where lots of yelling and numerous loud explosions are the order of the day, Jake Weber ( Meet Joe Black, Dangerous Beauty ) as Naval Intelligence officer Lt. Hirsch steals his scenes by underplaying them -- here is an actor who knows the dramatic value of standing still and staying calm.
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Sir Anthony Hopkins ("Titus," "The Mask of Zorro") gives the film some dignity as the story's occasional narrator and Jeffrey Tambor ("Meet Joe Black," HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show") appropriately plays the town's conceited mayor.