With much embarrassment, I admit that I made the mistake of renting this movie.  While this was actually a free rental for me, I sigh in disappointment as I realize I will never get that two hours of my life back (this movie is three hours long, but using the amazing powers of my DVD player, namely FF1, FF2, and the best one, STOP, I was able to shorten my couch-torture to approximately two hours).

The only think I have to feel good about is the fact that I stopped and removed this movie about 45 minutes before the ending, in some effort to prove to myself that I still had my dignity.

In a further attempt to vindicate myself, I decided to submit a review for this bad movie to the website from which I rented it, www.netflix.com.  My review had to be 200 words or less.

In my final edit, I decided to remove the sentence “Claire Forlani sucked, Brad Pitt sucked, this movie sucked”, and thus shortened the review to the following 191 words:

This film drags.  Anthony Hopkins gives a great performance, but Pitt's character Joe Black (the physical manifestation of death) frustrates the audience.  In one scene Pitt is very serious, and the solemn importance of his character's relationship with Hopkins' character is evident and intriguing.  A few scenes later Pitt is acting like a mental four-year-old who is fascinated with eating peanut butter or cookies.  Hopkins' relationship with Pitt had potential, but it makes no sense that the physical embodiment of death would take interest in loving life, eating cookies, or moreover falling in love with Claire Forlani's character.  This insensible duality of Pitt's character made this movie impossible to enjoy or even believe.

Forlani's performance in every scene is identical, whether she's happy, sad, frustrated or confused.  Over smile with the eyes, look left, look at the floor, look up, deliver the line, then look away.

If you enjoy watching Pitt act like an inquisitive child in an adult's body while Forlani winces and tries to act cute for over three hours, then this is the movie for you.  A more appropriate title for this movie would be "Meet Joe Boring".
 

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