Just Like Heaven
2005’s Just Like Heaven is about as typical as typical gets. A standard romantic comedy, Just Like Heaven was directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls, The Spiderwick Chronicles). The film earned much less than anticipated and was based on the novel If Only It Were True by Marc Levy. There is also a Bollywood version of the film entitled I See You. Just Like Heaven stars Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, and Jon Heder in his first film appearance following Napoleon Dynamite.
Witherspoon is Elizabeth Masterson, an overworked and work-obsessed doctor. Work is her whole life and she is coming off of an obscenely long shift at the hospital when she is involved in a car accident. Three months after the accident, we meet David Abbott (Ruffalo). David is a landscape architect turned alcoholic. He’s living in Elizabeth’s old apartment on some sort of rent deal with Elizabeth’s family (not sure how that worked out exactly, but it doesn’t matter).
Elizabeth seems like a normal person, but she can walk through walls and sit on beds. When she meets David in her old apartment, she tries to get her pad back and David starts to think he’s going crazy. As more events occur and more strange dichotomies of what Elizabeth’s form can do and not do take place, David begins to figure out that she’s actually a spirit. Elizabeth’s spirit tries to piece together her life, the accident, and why she’s been alone all of these years. With the help of a parapsychologist (Heder), David and Liz try to get some answers. Eventually, they fall in love.
Just Like Heaven is fluffy like cotton candy and full of empty calories. There’s no logic to the film, which normally isn’t a bad thing, but it starts to get out of hand when Liz can’t touch a telephone but does leave the indentation of her head on a pillow. Strange. The filmmakers change the rules as they go and basically concoct a convenient reason for how David’s the only one that can see Elizabeth. The same joke is made over and over again based on this premise and it wasn’t particularly funny the first time.
There are better ways to do just about everything Waters tried to do here. The direction is all a bit fuzzy, with strange backlighting filling up several scenes with unnecessary fuzziness and fabricated “warmth.” I know people don’t go see a movie like Just Like Heaven for the directorial skill involved, but it was distracting when I had to strain my eyes to see through the glare. Also, the musical manipulation is right on par with other similar films. The score hops and skips when something is supposed to be funny (or when something funny is about to happen) and moans and groans during sad moments. It’s all incredibly contrived.
The chemistry between Witherspoon and Ruffalo is barely there, save for a few moments of legitimate comedy and feeling. Overall, Witherspoon was fighting an uphill battle due to the fact that her brilliant performance in Walk The Line was out at around the same time. Ruffalo, who’s always been average and never been good, is about as bland a protagonist as one can get and is forgettable in every scene. Heder, meanwhile, is put there and expected to be funny because he’s Jon Heder. It doesn’t work, nothing he does or says is particularly funny, unless one finds the repeated line of “righteous” to be amusing in a sort of “ripped from the 90s” way.
It’s hard to muster up a whole lot to talk about when it comes to Just Like Heaven. I can only use adjectives representing boredom and blandness so much. There’s really nothing of note here, but it may prove to be popcorn fun for those in the mood for a forgettable attempt at a ghostly love story. The effects are bad and add nothing to the story, the chemistry is negligible at best, the screenplay is bland and contains very few actual jokes or moments of interest, and the supporting cast is terrible. All in all, Just Like Heaven isn’t the worst movie I’ve seen, but it’s probably the most forgettable I’ve seen in a long time.
Trailer:
