1998's Meet Joe Black is not well remembered. Despite starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins and marking Martin Brest’s directorial follow-up to the lauded Scent Of A Woman, the story of a supernatural romance story doesn’t really come up too often two decades following its release.
Well, that’s now changed thanks to comedian Rose O’Shea bringing the movie’s very best scene to the internet’s attention.
There’s not much point in describing the clip, which speaks for itself as one of the most perfectly paced comedic scenes ever committed to film. Still, the internet has risen to the challenge of trying to improve upon a masterpiece. The best results so far are the inevitable GIF of an endlessly bouncing Brad and a remix that slaps the Curb Your Enthusiasm stinger on the end of the clip.
In case you need more, filmmaker Joey Fameli has also cut together a delightful, longer version of the most important part of the scene—Pitt being flung back and forth like an anthropomorphic ball on a group of murderous seals’ noses—that gives the sound of screeching tires and smashing glass the welcome accompaniment of a jaunty instrumental tune.
It would be a mistake to take the genius of these clips as a Meet Joe Black recommendation. The movie is 181 minutes long and very, very mediocre. Luckily, it’s not 1998 anymore and we have the internet to sort the wheat from the chaff. Now, there’s no need to fast-forward between the above crash and the film’s only other notable scene, helpfully shared by Steph Davidson below.
It wouldn’t be until 2003's Gigli, when Brest tried to strike gold yet again, that we’d come close to matching the dramatic power of Joe Black again.
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