Reviewed - Just Like Heaven: Just Like Heaven is one of those movies that looked a whole lot better on paper. Mark Waters directed last year's best comedy, the sparkling, acutely observed Mean Girls.
In the leading roles of his new film are two capable, versatile actors, Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, and down the credits come entertaining Irish-American actor Donal Logue, Napoleon Dynamite discovery Jon Heder, and Ben Shenkman, who was so impressive in Angels in America.
Why any of them chose to go slumming it in Just Like Heaven is mystifying. Based on an allegedly spiritual French novel, it features Witherspoon as Elizabeth, an overworked doctor who, early in the film, has a car crash with a truck. Ruffalo plays David, a morose widower and landscape architect who never seems to do any work, yet can afford to rent her fabulous apartment and keep it stocked with booze.
Then Elizabeth turns up and lectures him about his drinking and slovenliness, but she also walks through walls and nobody other than David is able to see her. Is she a ghost? Is he going crazy?
Will we all go crazy watching this irritating, mawkish yarn that defies logic? Why does the soundtrack feature such bland MOR covers of Brass in Pocket and Ball of Confusion, and does Waters think it's funny to throw in the theme from Ghostbusters? Who cares?
