>>REVIEW
JUST LIKE HEAVEN
STARRING Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo and Jon Heder
DIRECTED BY Mark Waters
Opens Friday, September 16
Check listings
When a film is titled after a song by The Cure, directed by the guy who made Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, and stars Election’s Reese Witherspoon, You Can Count on Me’s Mark Ruffalo and Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder, you’d think it would be smarter, hipper or funnier than the average Hollywood rom-com. But while every law of physics dictates that the presence of these luminaries should brighten up Just Like Heaven, instead the movie dims them down to its level. It’s just that pointless and predictable, and seeing Witherspoon and Ruffalo make like Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck is sadder than hell.
See if you can spot the problem with the premise – a workaholic doctor (Witherspoon) gets hit by a truck and wakes up months later as an apparition in her old apartment, which is now sublet to a handsome loner (Ruffalo). She proceeds to fall for him as they try to figure out who or what she is. There are only two places a story like this can go – either he dies and they live happily-ever-hereafter, or she’s not really dead. Both outcomes are weird letdowns that make the secret third option – he finds her body and fucks it – look preferable.
As Witherspoon and Ruffalo bicker listlessly and orbit their own planets, Dina Waters, Donal Logue and Heder (playing a bookstore clerk schooled in the supernatural) steal laughs where they can since the script doesn’t provide them with any. Meanwhile, the film steals scenes o’ plenty from ’80s and ’90s chestnuts All of Me, Ghostbusters and Ghost. The only thing it doesn’t try to steal is your attention away from your watch. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.