Ghost stories involving romance are a recurring subject matter in Hollywood. Case in point, one can look at The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Heaven Can Wait, Somewhere in Time and the most recent entree, Just Like Heaven, a modest romantic comedy featuring attractive leads, Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. While reasonably entertaining and diverting, it doesn’t quite deliver the goods.
Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) is a workaholic doctor in San Francisco who drives to meet a blind date on a rainy night and swerves into the path of a truck. Weeks later, we see David (Mark Ruffalo) who is searching for an apartment when a circular, advertising a vacancy, literally finds him. Upon moving in and settling down, David is surprised and spooked by the appearance of Elizabeth who claims she already lives in the newly rented space. She mysteriously vanishes and reappears, and David is convinced that she must be a ghost. Yet she refuses to believe she is really dead. As they figure out the truth, David and Elizabeth find they are attracted to one another. When the reality of what happened to her that rainy night is revealed, David must resort to desperate measures to save the girl he loves before it is too late.
Directed by Mark Waters, who showed promise with comedies like Mean Girls, this is a film that wants to be more than it is. It aspires to be a lighthearted, romantic love story with dramatic and comedic overtones. That’s pretty ambitious for a script (adapted by Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon from Marc Levy’s novel, If Only It Were True) that would be better off on television. The themes are pretty familiar and have been done before and better. The filmmakers could have tightened the first hour and the pace would have been improved. At times, the plotline comes dangerously close to losing whatever momentum it has. It takes a long while for anything to happen, perhaps too long. However, the climax does pick up steam as the relationship between the two develops, and one just wishes there was more such life in the earlier stages. To be sure, there are nice touches in the story that allude to fate, coincidence, and true love, but the script doesn’t draw the connections as magically as one wishes.
Then there are the technical inconsistencies that even audiences with suspended disbelief may have a hard time to swallow. We see Elizabeth pass through walls and tables but why can we hear her footsteps on the floor or why can she sit in a truck without falling through? Granted, the special effects, while not earth shattering, are interesting and reasonably imaginative. It is also clever how the editing alternates between the ghostly Elizabeth and reality where no one sees or hears her except David. These point of view crosscuts when David is talking to Elizabeth even as the public sees him talking to no one are at times amusing.
The two stars do have nice screen chemistry together. Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Election) is watchable in almost anything she stars in, but she can only breathe so much life in a standard storyline. If Mark Ruffalo (Collateral, You Can Count on Me) gets hold of a great comedic script, then you’d definitely have something to utilize his versatility. After successful pairings with Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30, how about teaming him with Rachel McAdams or even Drew Barrymore?
Here is an obvious case of star power being enough to overcome an average script. As comedies go, it really doesn’t climb to great heights, but the leads are so appealing, it really doesn’t matter. A sure video rental, it is a pleasant bit of fluff that will certainly appeal to those who believe in true love and fairy tales. To the rest of the audience, just sit still and smile with your date.
**1/2 of **** stars (*** for romantics)
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