Starring: Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo
Director: Mark Waters
Rated: PG
BASED on the novel Et Si C’Etait Vrai (If Only it were True) by French novelist Marc Levy, Just Like Heaven is less a speculation about the celestial after-life (treated so thoughtfully in Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come and Ernst Lubitsch’s satire Heaven Can Wait) than a quasi-mystical bon-bon from DreamWorks in the mould of The Ghost and Mrs Muir.
In a role that reprises some of the edgy bite that made her performance in Election so memorable, Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde) plays Elizabeth, a workaholic emergency doctor in a San Francisco hospital who is scarcely aware that her demanding but fulfilling job with its long hours and relentless workload is robbing her of a personal life.
Elizabeth’s well meaning sister Abby (Dina Waters, wife of the director) arranges a blind date for her sister to rectify the situation.
On the same day, Elizabeth is told by her superior that she has been promoted to a permanent position much coveted in the department by her arch rival Dr Brett Rushton (Ben Shenkman).
Overjoyed by the news, Elizabeth climbs into her car and drives home in the rain, in the course of which she collides head-on into a truck.
Some days later, David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo), a landscape architect still mourning the death of his wife, is on the streets looking for an apartment to rent.
A seemingly chance flurry of wind blows a sub-let notice against him and, despite attempts by his bumptious real estate agent (Carolyn Aaron), to dissuade him from considering it, David falls in love with the apartment and moves in.
Gloomily ensconced in the flat with the pain of loss stretching endlessly in front of him, David discovers to his amazement that the apartment is not empty at all, but occupied by a vocal and very confused young woman (Elizabeth) who mysteriously appears to him in mirrors and disappears through walls, claiming all the while that he is the interloper and must vacate her premises immediately.
Not simply a ghost story or as predictable as it first seems, Just Like Heaven traverses with some degree of originality territory familiar to anyone who has leafed through so-called women’s magazines at a doctor’s surgery (the occult, ESP, near-death experiences, etc) or tuned in (accidentally, of course) to Oprah on afternoon television.
Levy’s novel became a bestseller in France and was translated into several languages, not simply because it is light and digestible, but because, as the original title suggests, we have a need to believe not only in love, but its power to conquer death and give life meaning.
At its best, Just Like Heaven makes for diverting entertainment.
It is wittily scripted, has some amusing special effects, all of them to do with Elizabeth’s incorporeality (she is visible only to David), and Witherspoon’s and Ruffalo’s appealing characters engage in the kind of repartee, crackling with half-recognised sexual attraction, that marks many of Hollywood’s best “between the wars” romantic comedies.
But for those in search of more substantial fare, Just Like Heaven is rather like sinking your teeth into fairy floss.
One wishes that Mark Waters (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) had trusted the sophistication of his audience more and probed with depth and imagination into some of the interesting issues that his film only touches upon, such as the mystery of consciousness, and when it is right (if at all) in modern medicine to “pull the plug”.
