In Martin Brest's less satirical Meet Joe Black, Brad Pitt stars as a doomed young man whose body has become a vessel for The Grim Reaper. Death wants to live human and learn the nature of grief, for people always seem so sad when he takes their loved ones to the other side. Death strikes a deal with the obviously-christened news mogul Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins): if he plays tour guide, Death will prolong a fatal heart attack enough for Parrish to bid a proper farewell to his loving family and the company he worked so hard to build. Parrish names him "Joe Black" for the sake of introductions.

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY ** (out of four) w. Maxwell Anderson, Gladys Lehman d. Mitchell Leisen Character development goes on sabbatical right along with The Grim Reaper in 1934's Death Takes a Holiday, the official, musty inspiration for Meet Joe Black, which occupies the second platter of that film's "Ultimate Edition" DVD. Essentially a refashioning of the Tod Browning Dracula (there's even a "wine" joke), Death Takes a Holiday stars Fredric March in the title role; here, Death inhabits the body of Prince Sirki in order to stay with artistocrat Duke Lambert (Sir Guy Standing)--the only one who's in on the ruse--for a few days. Pissy and naïve, Sirki confounds Lambert's upper crust circle of friends, though the visiting Grazia (Evelyn Venable) falls under his 'foreign' spell. Aside from a nice opening credits sequence and a hilarious montage in which people emerge from fatal-seeming accidents unscathed (Death is, after all, on vacation), Death Takes a Holiday has little to recommend it. Sirki and Grazia's courtship, on which the fate of the story rests, lasts all of five seconds, granting new appreciation for the fleshed-out Meet Joe Black. Death Takes a Holiday sports a surprisingly good full-frame (1.33:1) transfer, with print damage that's not overbearing. Audio is mono, natch, and it sounds as if it's been through only a light digital clean-up. In terms of posterity, this is one heck of a bonus feature. Image: B-; Sound: C+; English DD 2.0, English DTS 2.0; English CC, French and Spanish subtitles

What neither Parrish nor Joe counts on is that daughter Sue (Claire Forlani) met Pitt's unpossessed self in a coffee shop before Death came knocking, and they fell in love at first sight. She's puzzled by her suitor's newly curious personality (Joe is wise yet oblivious, unaccustomed to simple pleasures like the taste of peanutbutter; thus, he walks through much of the story in awe of our world), but grows to love this Joe, too (hey, he still looks like Brad Pitt). Parrish forbids an affair between Death and his little girl--he is defying fate itself.

Meet Joe Black is three hours long. A takeover subplot could have easily been resolved much earlier in the film than it is (its set-up, execution, and conclusion are handled in such a way that requires more suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer than the concept of a woman falling in love with the reaper). Brest draws things out ("Like a symphony," says Pitt on one of the DVD version's supplements; a bittersweet one, I add), and all of Meet Joe Black's threads and themes become entangled in a strange, sad climax. That he dwells on everything from Joe's love of our food to dysfunctional Parrish family dinners will strike some as irritating and others as utterly refreshing in American cinema--even Bergman-esque. (Ingmar, not Ingrid.) I'm in the latter camp. My problems with Meet Joe Black are not rooted in tempo and pace. To me, the film feels no more languid than Being There.

Hopkins and Pitt are marvelous, but Forlani fails to generate much chemistry with the latter. She's credible in her first café encounter with Joe, and portrays a convincing unease with him when he's suddenly behaving differently. It's the awkward transition from her pushing Death away to sneaking him into the poolroom for afternoon nooky that I didn't buy. The script doesn't support her at this juncture, and Forlani can't pull it off solo. (I have decided that my "Yankee accent rule" also applies Ms. Forlani; regular readers of this site will recall my belief that British actresses have a difficult time projecting emotion when speaking in an American dialect. Compare if you will Olivia Williams in The Postman to Olivia Williams in Rushmore, or Minnie Driver in Grosse Pointe Blank to Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting. Forlani, too, impresses as a generic ingenue in Meet Joe Black, but when she gives interviews, in her native speech, she is positively radiant.) Incidentally, Being There faltered when it involved its main character in a romantic adventure, too.

If too many cooks never quite nailed this broth, the four screenwriters of Meet Joe Black did have the good sense to garnish it with quotable lines. Joe explains that to grasp the experience of death you must take everything you know about it, "multiply it by infinity, and take it to the depths of forever." Parrish later repeats the line in an attempt to convey the act and concept of loving someone. I'm giving equal praise to Hopkins' delivery and the wonderful things he gets to say.

Unfortunately, many of these delightful exchanges were difficult to decipher on the original Meet Joe Black DVD and still are on its dubious "Ultimate Edition." The 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS mixes (the latter exclusive to the UE) are very subtle, with Thomas Newman's frolicsome score the only element filling the soundstage until some fireworks at the end of the picture. (Though when Parrish's first heart attack strikes, the moment contains a healthy amount of bass.) Dialogue is just too low and imbalanced; ride the volume in response and the music becomes overbearing, even distorted as far as Dolby goes.

While Meet Joe Black's picture quality fares better, this is not a top-drawer transfer. The three-hour film has been spread across the length of an RSDL disc in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Some edge-enhancement brings out the worst in grain, especially during preparations for the outdoor birthday bash in chapter 12, although Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography still looks luscious. Occasional close-ups are unacceptably soft, too, most noticeably in Joe's visit with an island woman at a hospital. The majority of this DVD is pleasing to the optic nerves, however, with accurate colour, far-ranging black level, and crisp detail (one can distinguish the crinkles on the white of Parrish's tuxedo).

The 2-disc Meet Joe Black: Ultimate Edition (packaged in a transluscent gatefold case that hates staying shut) reserves the entire first platter for the film and its multiple soundtrack configurations. The second DVD contains the 79-minute Death Takes a Holiday (see inset); a 6-minute montage of production stills set to Newman's compositions; trailers for Meet Joe Black, Scent of a Woman, and 12 Monkeys; production notes; cast/crew bios; DVD-ROM access to the screenplay and the Meet Joe Black website; and, finally, a 10-minute "Spotlight On Location" featurette thick with interviews. (It is here that Forlani speaks with veddy British inflections, and the change of voice is especially jarring when viewed right after the film.) This is one of the better, more enjoyable EPKs I've seen; one gets from it the sense that Brest would give a good commentary, so it's a shame he chose not to record one even for this Ultimate Edition.-Bill Chambers

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