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The classic film of this genre, "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," came out in 1947 now almost 60 years ago. It starred
Gene Tierney as a widow who rents a sea side home that belonged to a dead sea captain played by Rex Harrison. The roles were
played with gusto and passion and we believe every moment of their story no matter how silly it might appear on the surface
as we all would like to think that some part of our personality survives after death.
Now 57 years later Hollywood comes out with two young adults in a movie along this same theme and neither is believable
either in their careers or in their personalities or in their personal chemistry that they are supposed to share with each
other.
Worse yet, the story, while charming in some parts, far too often becomes either silly, inconsequential, or even brusque
and mean-spirited in other parts as it stoops to shoot for the cheap laughs instead of aiming higher for better humor.
Landscape architect David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo) seems to shower once a day and then he wipes off his steamy bathroom mirror
as if to shave, but he never does. And no matter how many times he showers, his hair always looks like he slept on his head
as it is perpetually uncombed and unkempt. Oh, how I long for the day when the grunge look will be replaced by a retro look
that harkens back to the sophisticated days as remembered by the Golden Years of Hollywood.
David is supposedly a successful landscape architect who has designed the gardens for a San Francisco multimillionaire,
among others, but he has lived in a funk for years since the sudden death of his beloved wife due to a brain hemorrhage.
What has happened to his business or all of the people who he must have employed? We don't know. Why doesn't he bury himself
in his work like most other men? We don't have the answer to that question either. I guess that their lives and the fact that
they are dependent upon him for their jobs and paychecks aren't all that important to him.
Dr. Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon) is trying for a hospital residency and yet she lives in a San Francisco penthouse
apartment with rights to the roof and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I figure an apartment like this would probably have
to rent for somewhere between $15,000 and $25,000 a month, but maybe I am being conservative when it comes to that overheated
real estate market on the Bay.
All this on a beginning surgeon's salary? No wonder she lives in the hospital. She can't afford to do anything else. One
would think that a studio apartment would suffice for this workaholic, but Hollywood always has to overdo it.
She rents this apartment, fully furnished mind you, instead of some small walkup in the outer fringes of exurbia and yet
none of her neighbors have met her or seen her around the place as she is such a workaholic. So, we get "meet cute"
in an entirely unbelievable "meet cute beautiful location," both under less than believable circumstances.
This movie wants us to buy into these unlikely premises before we even get to the problems with the story.
Among its many sins besides being boring and poorly written, this movie is also badly miscast.
Here the eminently likable Reese Witherspoon is given a role as a doctor without an ounce of gravitas or the requisite
intellectual maturity to suggest that she really is capable of being a surgeon for a premier San Francisco hospital.
Why they would have us believe that she is a workaholic surgeon capable of being promoted to staff physician of the hospital
merely because she works longer hours than anybody else is beyond me. Why not have her in a role that is more believable,
like a school teacher, store manager, or a small business entrepreneur? Witherspoon is light and fluffy, not deep and introspective
due to years of medical studies.
Witherspoon is a fine actress in the right roles, especially those in light comedic roles such as 2001's "Legally
Blonde" or as a fashion designer in 2002's "Sweet Home Alabama," which I liked a lot more than most other film
critics. At least there I could buy her as a fashion designer.
She also does well in period pieces like her role as Cecily in 2002's "The Importance of Being Earnest," the
delightful play about manners by Oscar Wilde, or as the famous Thackeray heroine, Becky Sharp, in the little seen 2004 film,
"Vanity Fair," another movie that failed at the box office but which I admired greatly.
Reese Witherspoon can do a credible job at acting if she is given the right role. Sadly, this role as Dr. Elizabeth Masterson
is not the right role for her.
Mark Ruffalo is a better actor in roles demanding more than what he is asked to do than here as David Abbott, a grieving
husband mourning the loss of his wife. I was highly impressed by him when he first costarred as the wayward brother in the
2000 movie, "You Can Count on Me" with Laura Linney. He was also very good in a small role as a policeman in the
excellent 2004 movie, "Collateral."
Ruffalo has that wound up, intense look of a man who could go either way in a difficult situation. He commands the screen
when he is on it, but he also seems to wear thin if he is the star. But this I mean to say that he is far more impressive
in supporting roles than here as the leading man.
He also does not strike me as the proper actor to play opposite Reese Witherspoon. Film critics were less than lukewarm
to Witherspoon in "Sweet Home Alabama," and yet I ask you to tell me whether you think that Mark Ruffalo in "Just
Like Heaven" is as effective as Josh Lucas is in that movie playing the romantic lead opposite Reese Witherspoon. To
my mind, there is no comparison.
What really surprises me is that some film critics, notably the two main Chicago movie critics in their weekly television
program, commented that they thought that the two stars exhibited great chemistry together. They then went on to recommend
the movie. If Ruffalo and Witherspoon did exhibit this chemistry, then I sure didn't see it.
"Just Like Heaven" opens with a quick pastiche of scenes meant to impress us with Dr. Elizabeth Masterson's
medical credentials. She is trying out for a residency position at a San Francisco hospital and has been on call for 23 hours
straight. Grabbing 20 winks in the staff lounge, her mind floats off to some distant garden of peace until another medical
emergency crops up and she is yanked back to the demanding reality at hand.
Elizabeth, not "Lizzie," thank you very much, is in competition with a fellow Doctor Walsh (Ron Canada) for
the one residency slot available. The staff head comes out and tells her that she has won the position and he then advises
her to go home and rest as she has worked long enough.
She has been invited to a dinner party that evening, but she is late leaving the hospital. On the way home she veers over
to the other side of the road and runs headlong into a truck.
A high end real estate agent is showing David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo) all the best fully furnished apartments available
for subletting, but he fails to find any of them appealing. His measure of how good an apartment is comes down to just how
comfortable he feels when he sits down in the coach in the living room, preferably in front of a television set with a cold
beer in his hand.
A dark blue flier for an apartment to sublet for a short term blows off a board and lands at his feet while he is talking
with his increasingly exasperated agent. He doesn't notice. The flier then is blown up to his knee, but he brushes it off.
Finally, Fate is as exasperated as the agent and blows the blue flier into his face. (How nice if we all could have a clear
signal like this!) David now is forced to take notice.
Naturally the apartment is right across the street from where they are standing and Dr. Masterson has just the perfect,
plush couch waiting for him in the living room of the classic vintage, extraordinarily spacious apartment with a million dollar
view of the Golden Gate Bridge. There is even a private access to the roof that comes with the apartment.
Soon David is sitting in the couch and leaving water marks on the furniture as he drinks his cold beer without using a
coaster. He thinks that he is the presumed owner/lessee of the apartment but Elizabeth, as the real owner, quickly shows up
to haunt him when he steps out of the shower or when he leaves his beer sit on the table without a coaster.
The quirky side plot in this ghostly tale is that Elizabeth doesn't know who she is. The only thing that she knows is
that she lives in this apartment. How convenient a plot point for this story. They start by knocking on the doors of the other
residents to find out if any of them knows their upstairs neighbor. None do as none have met her.
But one apartment does offer some bounty in the form of a tall, athletic, sexually hungry woman casually dressed in revealing
gym wear. She introduces herself as Katrina (Ivana Milicevic), and she asks David to pry open a stuck window in her apartment.
She complains to David that none of the single males that she has met in San Francisco are heterosexual. Much to the consternation
of Elizabeth, who is lurking invisibly in the background, Katrina looks at David much like a hungry lion looks at fresh meat.
Slowly the clues reveal who Elizabeth really is, but not first without some painfully illogical idiocy like David being
laughed out of a bar where he is sharing a drink with Jack Houriskey (Donal Logue), his therapist and friend who is anxious
for him to get back to living once again. The other patrons see him carrying on a conversation with the unseen Elizabeth and
the people assume him to be over the edge.
In another instance a man collapses at a fancy restaurant and Elizabeth feeds David information on the correct operational
procedure to correct his illness. If you think that any man alive is going to cut into a guy's chest and insert a vodka pourer
into his chest so that he can breath again, you are a better person than I. This, I might add, is before David is aware of
Elizabeth having any medical credentials whatsoever.
An additional plot point has David and the invisible Elizabeth go to a New Age book store to seek the help of the books
therein and any suggestions that Darryl (Jon Heder), the manager of the store may be able to offer. As a slacker dude apparently
on drugs, Darryl is of little help other than exclaiming "Righteous!" at increasingly annoying times throughout
the movie. This Darryl reminds me more of the three mentally challenged Darryls on the old Bob Newhart comedy show.
The movie finishes with a highly implausible, fairy tale ending. The whole movie consists of an inconsequential story
filled with miscast lead actors and weighed down, sunk, to use a more descriptive term, by far too many supremely illogical
plot points. Skip it.
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