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‘Just Like Heaven’

The romantic comedy “Just Like Heaven” opened with a bang on Friday. Reese Witherspoon stars as Elizabeth, a workaholic doctor striving for an attending position at her San Francisco hospital. We quickly see that she has sacrificed having a personal life for her work, and everyone around her knows it. Her sister Abby (Dina Waters), on the other hand, is a wife and mother of two who wants to see Elizabeth happily married and actively tries to aid her in this feat by setting her up on a series of blind dates.

Within the first 20 minutes of the film, Elizabeth has been promoted to an attending and is on her way to her sister’s house for yet another blind date when she is involved in a head on auto collision.

Mark Ruffalo plays David, a landscape architect and a widower who is completely consumed with his grief. He sublets Elizabeth’s apartment but is unaware of the circumstances behind the apartment’s last tenant. When Elizabeth’s spirit shows up at the apartment, David has to convince Elizabeth that he is the current resident and that Elizabeth’s ability to walk through solid objects indicates that she is not wholly alive and present. Elizabeth knows that the apartment is hers, but can remember little else about herself. She has no memory of who she is or what she does or any knowledge of the accident.

While David first resists helping Elizabeth discover who she is and why they were thrown together in such an unusual way, the tension between them eventually forms into a romantic connection. David discovers that Elizabeth’s body has been in a coma for three months and if he doesn’t do something quickly, her life support is going to be removed.

This film struck me as a cross between the 1993 film, “Heart and Souls” and the 1990 film “Ghost.” A spirit has been given the opportunity to use a person (the only one who can see her) to discover and complete her unfinished business. The updated twist is that her body is still alive. While this film requires a complete suspension of disbelief, the characters and actors who play them are endearing enough to make it worth while.

There are several scenes that are so ludicrous that I found myself fluctuating between laughter and horror at their implausibility. In one scene Dr. Elizabeth talks David through an emergency life saving procedure where he uses a knife from a restaurant kitchen to puncture a whole in a patron’s chest after he passes out while dining.

Of course there are also the tender moments that come with any romantic comedy, and Ruffalo does a good job playing the sweet, romantic lead who discovers love and life for a second time. Witherspoon shines as the know it all over-achiever who learns the importance of life when she gets a second chance.

“Napoleon Dynamite’s” Jon Heder plays a psychic book store clerk who has the ability to sense spirits and is enlisted by David to help figure out why he has been visited by Elizabeth’s spirit. Heder doesn’t stray too far from his Napoleon Dynamite humor, and I mean that in the best way possible. Most of the funny lines in this film come from Heder’s scenes and my only complaint is that he isn’t in the film enough.

I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will remind you that this is a romantic comedy in every way. If you are looking for a sweet escape from the daily stresses of life, and you don’t mind abandoning everything you know about realism, then I would say go see this film.

• **1/2

— Emily Baldwin