Just Like Heaven

Equipped with the ideal cast for a sweet and snappy romantic comedy, Just Like Heaven turns out to be just like disappointment.

Scruffy, nerd-hunk Mark Ruffalo (whose resume is still very impressive despite this hiccup-Eternal Sunshine, Collateral) plays widower David Abbott, who moves into a seemingly uninhabited apartment in San Francisco. The apartment, however, houses the spirit of Dr. Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon), a workaholic physician who was apparently too busy to notice that she drove head-on into an 18-wheeler and wound up in a coma.

Ironically, it's Witherspoon's performance that's the real tragedy-you find yourself longing for the warmth she showed in Sweet Home Alabama within moments of her appearance on screen. As the Ghost-redux plot progresses, with the fully human Abbott falling for the transient Masterson, Witherspoon becomes increasingly unconvincing. You expect better from an actress who showed such promise in Election, Pleasantville and American Psycho, but hope is dwindling that she will be the heir-apparent to romantic comedy queen Meg Ryan.

Equally frustrating is that the funniest moment in the film doesn't come from the potentially-fantastic sidekicks: highly-underutilized Donal Logue and Jon Heder (turning on the surfer drool yet barely achieving Napoleon Dynamite-lite, sans the sweet hair). No, the funniest line comes from neighborhood skank Katrina (Ivana Milicevic), who-while attempting to seduce David-blesses us with her opinion of current world events: "Hello, Osama? Communism is so over. Give your people toilet paper." And while you're at it, give me something better than this piece of middling melodrama.