in love with death

Meet Joe Black (1998)
4 Stars
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Claire Forlani

A remake of 1934's Death Takes A Holiday, Meet Joe Black feels like a modern-day It's A Wonderful Life. It has the same whiff of corniness and conventionality — both easily excused by those with the slightest romantic leanings. It's a chick flick, but an awfully engaging one.

While this is neither Hopkins' nor Pitt's best work, they fill their roles nicely. Forlani plays an ideal romantic heroine, modernized to be a doctor as well as an heiress, but otherwise having all the time in the world to devote to love-making. She is the heart of what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill film. All you really need to make a great romance is chemistry, and this movie has got enough to turn lead to gold.

This is one of those movies that have a whole bunch of little things that could be better, but that you never notice once you're wrapped up in the romance. It's a litmus test for romantic sensibility: if you're not romantic, it may seem like a three-hour experiment in implausibility; but if you are a romantic, I guarantee you will love this movie. I did.