Reviews

Depsite its unfamiliar (for American audiences) Irish setting and the talents of Bob Hoskins, Felicia's Journey is ultimately material we've seen before, laboriously told. A serial killer is this time watched through his slow trip from last victim to latest victim rather than in the middle of his killing sprees. The idea is to investigate what makes him like he is. We see his abundantly ridiculous French chef mother who treats him like a pet alternately punishing and smothering him with kisses or shoving raw liver down his throat. This is supposed to be the source of his affliction. We are treated to his obsessive attachment to his (deceased) mother through a series of preposterous evenings of food preparation while he watches her make the same meal on ancient videotape. The woman playing his mother has the most annoying French accent ever heard on film. I would have had to kill her myself had she been my mother, simply because of how she rolled her "errrrr"s.

Meantime he befriends a naive and pregnant Irish teen for whom we figure he has something unpleasant planned. We watch the entire courtship which involves her desperate, if rather slow and pointless, search for the boyfriend who made her tummy stick out (which it never actually does in the film). By the time the denouement comes, any of the mild interest stirred up by the ghoulish weirdness of Hoskins' life is dissipated entirely and I couldn't wait for it to end.

Watching these old Gene Autry films is, for people over 50, a blast from the way way way past. Especially fun to watch: Pat Buttram, the squeaky-voiced comedy relief sidekick. Buttram worked, often doing voice overs, right up until he died in the mid-1990s. Was also in Back To The Future III.

"The 'Citizen Kane' of Beach Movies." Keith Kuramoto, Cinema Graduate, San Francisco State University

"This film was the template for all the teen-sex, coming-of-age, boys-and-boobs films of the 80's and 90's - From 'Porky's' to 'American Pie.'" Brian MacGregor, Cinema Graduate, San Francisco State University

This definitive Southern California sun-and-surf cult film is sacred in Japan!

Where's the DVD for this film?

Vestron Video!Are you listening? MGM: Where's the SEQUEL? California Dreamt!

Definitely not as moving as the original "Death Takes A Holiday" (rather disturbingly left off the credits as the source material) with the inimitable Frederick March, nonetheless Meet Joe Black has its moments. It's too long, yes, and filled with pregnant pauses that don't always deliver brilliant offspring. But there are aspects of this film that provide the kinds of goods that cinema has always provided since the days of Valentino and Pickford: Beautiful people to look at. Claire Forlani is very appealing, and Brad Pitt is the best looking man in the movies today. Not enough?

OK. Anthony Hopkins is fine as the powerful media magnate who is bound for Jordan's banks. Without him this film could have been a chore.

Brad Pitt's character in the beginning of the film is very winning, but he disappears when Death takes him over. The Death character is less appealing and Pitt struggles with it, not always successfully. His best moments are the scenes with a dying Jamaican woman in a hospital. There his liveliness and intensity are evident. Of course, being Death, how lively can he really be?

And it's too long. Did I mention that?

The sub-plot about the boardroom takeover is somewhat labored and feels inorganic to the rest of the story. However, taken as a whole, this film is better than the critics are giving it credit for.

It's just too damn long.