Very true. The pacing is flawless. You just slip into the story like comfortable slippers, and, not unlike a David Lynch film, the questions and pregnant pauses have a hypnotic effect.
The sumptuous visuals and music also cast a spell, and 3 hours later you’re almost sad it’s all over.
Thank god Martin Brest had final cut, the studio would have been frothing to butcher this masterpiece down to the typical 2 hours for a 90’s movie.
Unlike the recent Mission Impossible films - bloated because they started shooting without a script and tried to ‘save’ the gigantic mess in the edit - Meet Joe Black actually has narrative flow.

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I've never seen such a SLOW movie! How slow?? 3 hours long? NO, it was FOUR HOURS LONG!!! Yes, four hours thanks to American TV service providers like Time Warner Cable. Sucks the excitement right out of it by taking the viewer out of the movie way to often & way too long. Yes, 60 minutes of commercials! Shame on the right to earn a profit with FREE enterprise - makes capitalism look greedy & heartless, plus corrupt & out of control. Why it would take a movie or romance addict to watch through all that non-sense advertising that we're told is the same volume at the show itself. If this is not lies, then what is it? Disingenuous, insincere, dishonest, untruthful, false, deceitful, duplicitous, lying, mendacious; hypocritical. Makes Americans look terrible, like liars
!

It felt like five to me.

Well it sure felt 3 hours to me I liked it and have only seen it once before years ago. It's unique, and mainly because it's when Brad Pitt was in hist prime and he and Anthony owned pretty much every minute of it. So 3 "noticeable" hours but well spent IMHO

my sentiments exactly. they so successfully create this slice of life that you are visiting you never want to leave.
if you've never seen an elephant ski, then you've never been on acid.