MOVIE REVIEWS
Just Like Heaven
Angela Lovell
I planned to hate this movie. And I did at the very start when my most favorite song, “Just Like Heaven” is sloshed through by whiny Katie Melua instead of the gloom-spunk master, Robert Smith. I didn’t even have an open mind about this film. And that’s why Just Like Heaven is so deserving of a good review. Like eating junkfood, there is a time and place to neglect quality for a good time. And that is what this film is to me – Leftover Halloween candy found in the freezer. It’s not gonna clean your liver or brighten your skin, but it’s gonna be a good, secretly-shamed time.
Reese’s Blonde Ambition tour kicked off with her two-part roles of pink-encased, Chihuahua lovin’ lawyer, and now our little debutant has come full circle by playing a doctor. In blue scrubs, Reese is all work, no play, busting ass in a San Francisco emergency room and forsaking her lovelife. After a twenty-six hour shift that would render anyone retarded, Reese drives to her sister’s house in the rain, talking on her cell phone, and playing with the stereo’s knobs. I wonder what’s gonna happen?! A semi-truck hits her head-on as the radio blasts “Let The Good Times Roll.” From this moment on the movie slowly stops sucking.
I turn to my two picky girlfriends upon Mark Ruffalo’s entrance and ask, “Do you think he’s cute?”
They shrug. I share their indifference. But as he sputters through encounters in his recent sublet apartment with Reese’s spirit (who does not want a roommate) Mark begins to grow on us. Aaaand grow on Reese. Mark is depressed, repeatedly watching his wedding video and drinking a lot of beer. Reese is pissed because Mark does not understand the concept of coasters. Mark wanders into an occult store where a psychic Napoleon Dynamite (fo real) sells him books to conjure or expel the obsessive-compulsive undead. But Reese is stubborn and takes her own steps to get rid of Mark, singing at the top of her tiny lungs, “Tomorrow” and illustrating for the world why she will never be a Broadway baby. Mark busts out big guns as the producers pay big bucks for rights to the “Ghostbusters” song, when a couple of half-ass Ghostbusters came, saw, and kicked no ass. Instead of taking up coasters, Mark brings in The Joy Luck Club to work Asian magic on Reese, but to no avail. Even a seething priest cannot compel Reese with the power of Christ. Finally, Napoleon Dynamite comes over and tells Mark he’s the one who’s dead. Y’know, like, on the inside, man. Reese snaps at this discovery with, “You were dumped! Probably for some guy who doesn’t have a couch fused to his ass!”
Napoleon reminds Reese to respect the dead after Mark runs up to the roof to sulk. As an overworked doctor, it is her nature to care, so Reese tries to help Mark quit his drinking as he tries to help her figure out all the things she cannot recall about her life. The duo meets up with a sexually aggressive neighbor who tells Mark of Reese, “She was like a cat lady without any cats.”
Rawl! In the odd couple’s travels, a waiter trips and falls in a restaurant, lying on the floor and slowly suffocating for no apparent reason. As a manager pleads, “Is there a doctor in the house?!” Reese remembers her calling and jumps in, directing Mark on saving the waiter’s life. Only in the movies would anyone hand insecure, fumbling Mark Ruffalo a knife and bottle of vodka and watch him go to town on an unconscious waiter. The waiter breaths again and Reese is back! Well, almost. Except for that bodyless part. At the hospital, Mark and Reese make a very obvious discovery and the film gets a new direction.
Mark stops drinking. Reese catches the sex-starved neighbor trying to boink Mark. Now Reese goes to the roof to sulk, really suffering over the loss of her body. Mark joins her after sending slut-next-door away. Reese asks what he told Slut. Mark replies, “That I was seeing someone.”
“Honestly?”
“Well, I didn’t say I was the only person who could.”
And then Mark wins my bleeding heart as he tells a story of his ex-wife’s broken heel and how she’d mangle the TV’s remote control. It’s so precious that I want his fuzzy head in my lap! Not only does he win my heart (along with the hearts of my cohorts) but Reese’s pieces melt too.
Now that the heat is on, Mark plays Whoopi Goldberg to Reese’s Patrick Swayze, going to her sister’s house and making up a story about spinal meningitis that is utterly creepy, weird and CUTE. After being chased from the premises with a butcher knife, Mark deduces to Reese, “I don’t think your sister is a very spiritual person.”
Back to the drawing board. Mark takes Reese to the occult store where Napoleon says, “You can’t bring that thing in here, Dude!”
But I don’t understand how he can take her anywhere since she falls through walls and tables in her own damn apartment, yet can sit in the seat of his pick-up truck? This is also inconvenient when the two try to justify their love on what seems to be their last night together. The next day Mark has a brainstorm and sure-fire plan to keep Reese. Trying to save her soul, Mark the necropheliac tells Reese, “I love you,” before busting out some old-school fairytale no-fail, guaranteeing us our happy ending.
Reese gets to be pretty and quirky, but it’s Mark Ruffalo who makes this movie (dare I say it?)... GOOD. He applies a very natural, unique rhythm to his lovesick character, similar to what I’d seen him do in the GREATEST love movie ever, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. Chics need flicks too, and this is a lady’s equivalent to guys’ Vin Diesel action and explosions. I hated the beginning, but working into this seemingly suspicious nugget, I realized its center was tasty and easy to swallow. Especially when Robert Smith finally sang as the credits rolled, “Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick!”
Trick or treat, it’s all fun and games til somebody gets stuck in Purgatory.
