Just Like Heaven

Reviewed by Aricson Tarasova
February 19, 2006

Director: Mark Waters Studio: Dreamworks SKG MPAA: PG-13 for some sexual content Website: www.justlikeheaven-themovie.com/main.html Review Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Reese Witherspoon haunts Mark Roffalo in this romantic comedy about the absence of love in the lives of Elizabeth, an emergency room surgeon and David, a self-destructing widower. David is basically drinking away his life when an angry woman suddenly appears in his new San Francisco apartment and tells him to get out. After a few more odd encounters with this blonde control freak, David is convinced his apartment is haunted and takes measures to evict the spirit, that is, until he begins to get to know her. With David's help, the spirit starts to remember her former life as a lonely trauma surgeon. The two begin to fall in love, but the romance is challenged when Elizabeth 's existence as a spirit is threatened.

It's Just Like Heaven for Dave (Mark Ruffalo) and his soul-mate Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon).

Although an enjoyable romantic comedy, Just Like Heaven adheres too closely to the formula of the genre, the Hollywood rule of thumb forbidding romantic comedies to be any longer than ninety minutes. I feel this rule applied to Just Like Heaven , confines it too tightly and does not allow enough time for the lead characters to fall in love. This is also due to the fact that the narrative is what is considered a “high-concept” film (a film with larger-than-life qualities). The formulaic plot moves a little too fast for full development of the characters, but what is shown of them is well done.

David and Elizabeth's conflicting personalities and their tragic emotional handicaps make their relationship believable and heartwarming to watch. Despite their constant bickering and badgering, they learn from each other what loveless and unfulfilling lives they had been leading. This is a refreshing change from the cheaply packaged sentiments and bleak social commentaries prevalent in today's movie industry; however, I would like to have seen the high-concepted-ness of the film properly articulate itself without conforming to a clichéd third act that unnecessarily blares a possible analogy with the recent Terri Schiavo debate.

Just Like Heaven has a sweet, naive innocence about it which comes off as conservative. The characters are all inoffensive, clean-cut, responsible and mostly Anglo – right down to the slutty neighbor and the party-animal buddy. The film shows a fairy tale representation of San Francisco , leaving out the diversity and problems of the real San Francisco . There are no homeless people in Just Like Heaven's San Francisco , or even any gay characters (only light-hearted jokes referring to them). The only diversity in the film is reflected by an Asian-American supporting character and a very minor African-American character. Although I was not disturbed by such a sweet, homogenous one-sided portrayal of San Francisco , I was very conscience of it.

The romantic fantasy found in Just Like Heaven embraces the values and ideals of a very specific audience: the conservative, Anglo-American middle class. Now, I'm not a part of that particular group, so to speak, but I can appreciate Just Like Heaven as a work of art, representing the hopes and dreams of that distinct cultural perspective in the same way that I could appreciate different perspectives found in any ethnocentric film.

Just like Heaven does reduce working-class Anglos, Catholics, Chinese, and liberals to subjects for comedic effects. These caricatures appear mainly in a montage during which David hires representatives of these groups to get rid of Elizabeth 's spirit. The caricatures, though not blatantly racist, do belittle the narrative's emotional effectiveness and cheapen the film. The subjects also reinforce the attitude that other races/beliefs are to be tolerated, but not respected.

I am giving Just Like Heaven only a Medium Evolution Rating. Although an enjoyable film, the movie's replay value is diminished by the small-mindedness reflected in the caricatures portrayed and the short, formulaic narrative that diminished the quality of the two lead actors. Just Like Heaven could have been a funnier, more fulfilling and bigger film if the filmmakers could have been, well… a little bit more sensitive to the material that they were handling.