Don't Fear The Reaper -- `Meet Joe Black' Is Two-Thirds Of A Good Movie About Facing Death

Movie review XX 1/2 "Meet Joe Black," with Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Claire Forlani, Jake Weber, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Tambor. Directed by Martin Brest, from a script by Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno, Kevin Wade and Bo Goldman. 180 minutes. Several theaters. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of an accident scene, some sexuality and brief strong language.

Director Martin Brest takes a large gamble with this semi-remake of "Death Takes a Holiday," expanding the thin story to three full hours and casting Brad Pitt as a goofily romantic version of the Grim Reaper.

For the most part it works, but a slide into conventionality undercuts the fatalism of the original, substituting a deus-ex-machina finale that makes little sense and robs the story of its potential power. It also slows things down and makes you aware how long the movie is.

It's really a shame. For a couple of hours, "Meet Joe Black" effectively sets its own pace, establishes an engaging sense of whimsy and gives Pitt his best role since he went so spectacularly nuts in "12 Monkeys."

Pitt's Reaper is no forbidding horror-film creature but a handsome innocent, new to the ways of mankind, who delights in such simple pleasures as licking peanut butter from a spoon and finding something to like about nearly everyone he meets. He grows genuinely fond of a widowed businessman (Anthony Hopkins at his smoothest) and his compromised son-in-law (the endlessly inventive Jeffrey Tambor) and falls in love with the businessman's vulnerable daughter (Claire Forlani).

He's also so disruptive to the old man's business that he offends the daughter's ambitious boyfriend (Jake Weber) and inadvertently encourages a power play. Rather like Peter Sellers' blissfully ignorant gardener in "Being There," Joe Black becomes an adviser whose simplest pronouncements take on other meanings.

In the creaky, 78-minute 1934 film version of "Death Takes a Holiday" (based on Alberto Cassela's once-popular 1920s play), Fredric March played Death, who assumes the form of a handsome, melancholy prince, falls for an idealistic young woman (Evelyn Venable) and eventually takes her with him.

In the forgotten 1971 TV remake (which clocked in at 73 minutes), Monte Markham and Yvette Mimieux brought a lighter touch to these roles, but only Pitt and Forlani have been encouraged to play many of their scenes for comedy.

Even the most horrific episode from the original film, in which March stares into a young woman's eyes and reveals his true nature, is given a humorous touch here. A freak traffic accident, which allows Death to assume Pitt's body early in the film, is played for shocks and laughs.

Brest first saw the 1934 movie a couple of decades ago, around the same time he made his directing debut with the similarly death-haunted musical comedy, "Hot Tomorrows." He felt "there was a suggestion in the old movie of what might be a great story, but it was a story that had yet to be discovered." He's been seriously working on it for more than a decade.

Brest's previous picture, "Scent of a Woman" (1992), felt bloated at 157 minutes. It was a remake of a 1974 Italian movie that managed to tell the same story in less than two hours. But hardly anyone cared because the acting was first-rate and the story clicked in its new, Americanized setting. Brest even got a best-director Oscar nomination for his troubles.

It's impossible to predict if he'll get another. Earlier this week, audiences at a packed preview screening for "Meet Joe Black" seemed in a mood to dismiss it when it was over, perhaps because the finale drags so noticeably. Yet many were charmed by the early scenes, and hardly anyone took a bathroom break during the 180-minute running time.