'Just Like Heaven' more like hell


By Nate Buchik
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, September 22, 2005

You know what I liked? That "Ghost Dad" movie with Bill Cosby.

I doubt it was good, but I was only 6 when it came out.

You know what I didn't like? "Just Like Heaven." Mainly because it just came out and I'm not a high school girl.

It's all about seeing a flick in the right place and right time in your life. I'm still waiting for my high school girl phase.

In one of the most mind-numbing movies of the year, "Just Like Heaven" shows the romantic pairing of a ghost and a man. You can almost hear Hollywood say, "It was terrible in 'Ghost,' why not try it again?"

The film starts with an adult-contemporary cover of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" as the camera soars through the clouds - at this point I considered leaving.

Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon), a workaholic doctor with no social life, soon gets hit by a truck and "dies."

Sad, dumped architect David (Mark Ruffalo) moves into her furnished apartment without knowing what happened to the previous tenant. Soon, Elizabeth starts showing up and haunting the place. She tries to get David out by annoying him, but David won't leave and he can't get rid of her. Even Jon Heder, aka Napoleon Dynamite, shows up as a follower of the occult to try to get her out of the place. He fails.

Then, when David goes out to a bar, Elizabeth possesses him to get him to stop drinking. That is when I left the theater.

The zany antics that happen when a ghost possesses a person were played in typical fashion, but I'm so tired of typical.

My guess from the trailer and conventions of these types of movies are that Elizabeth and David soon learn to love each other, and somehow get together at the end, even though she's a ghost.

RATING
Don't see it
? out of 10
Rated PG-13
95 Minutes
Dreamworks

Ruffalo and Witherspoon are good-looking people, which is nice. Ruffalo can even act a little bit, but after coming off dramatic roles, he looks silly in this cutesy fare. Matthew McConaughey must not have been available. Witherspoon acts pretty much like a nagging Monica from "Friends."

Because I didn't see the whole movie, it's tough to give much more of a review. So I'll just publish the list of questions that I had while watching the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Why do people like Reese Witherspoon?

Does the director of "Mean Girls" want to lose all credibility?

Why would a rich and successful person like David drink only Miller Genuine Draft cans?

How much did Miller Genuine Draft pay for product placement?

How do you have sex with a ghost?

Why am I so bitter? Can't I enjoy some mindless sentimentality?

No, I can't enjoy that right now, because my ghost just dumped me last week.

Those kinds of wounds are slow to heal.