Heaven Can Wait-Reese Witherspoon’s “Just Like Heaven” (2005)-A Film Review

DVD Review  

By Guest Film Critic Fettis Ray

Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, 2005 

From day one of the film industry Hollywood has played a million versions of the boy meets girl (or girl meets boy-your choice) story sometimes to great –and profit. Some of those efforts have been serious about thwarted love and others like the film under review, Just Like Heaven, have taken, or tried to take romantic on the light side, as comedy. In the case of this film despite two acknowledged very fine actors the thing turns cinematically into a leaden balloon around a confusing odd-ball plot.         

Here’s the play, quickly. Hard-working, driven, Doctor Elizabeth 

Masterson, played by Reese Witherspoon (she of Walk The Line fame and award and rightly so), had an accident on the way to a blind date arranged by her sister. She winds up in a coma in that same hospital she was working so hard at. Since she was not using her to die for apartment overlooking the bay in Frisco Town her sister rented out the place to David, played by Mark Ruffalo, who had his own loses to deal with. Lost his wife to illness and for the previous couple years had turned himself into a couch potato.    

All well and good so far and then some light-weight “magical realism” takes over as the comatose Elizabeth has an out of body experience and winds up back in her now not vacant apartment. But only David can see her (he was the blind date she missed by having that damn accident) and the story line follows that line for a while as they both seriously try to figure out who she is not without a few comic hitches. Along the way as well as they explode each other’s woes they fall in love if such a thing can happen under the circumstances. The whole thing gets fouled up once a decision is made to take the comatose Elizabeth off life support. No problem though in what can only be described as the power of love she snaps out of it after David’s intervention. Of course Elizabeth awake does not recognize David from her outer body days and he is crestfallen. But don’t worry about a thing because you know, or you should know since day one of film-making that these two will figure out how to get together short of heaven. That is all I can say but to me this was a stretch, more than a stretch and in Frisco Town of all places.