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Just Like Heaven Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sexual content) Genre: Comedy, Romance Theater release: September 16, 2005 by DreamWorks SKG Directed by: Mark Waters(Mean Girls, Freaky Friday) Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes Cast: Reese Witherspoon (Elizabeth Masterson), Mark Ruffalo (David Abbott), Donal Logue (Jack Houriskey), Jon Heder (Darryl), Dina Waters (Abby Brody) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

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I had no interest in seeing Just Like Heaven. I was, in fact, actively opposed to it. Don't get me wrong—I'm as much a devotee of romantic comedies as any self-respecting, popcorn-buying, Kleenex-toting, date-dragging female moviegoer. And I'm enough of a Reese Witherspoon fan to feel I can count on her for at least a likable protagonist. It's just that I really, really, don't like ghost stories—not even romantic, comedic ones. I hated Ghostbusters. I never saw Ghost. I refused to watch even the trailer for Beetlejuice. Paranormal storylines have just never appealed to me, and, on some level, I think I've been loath to watch movies that go there because I worry that "there" is a place we shouldn't go. In my mental filing cabinet, ghost stories belong in a locked drawer with horoscopes and tealeaves and séances and all manner of Things a Christian Doesn't Indulge In.

Reese Witherspoon as Elizabeth, who has a way of showing up out of nowhere

So when my editor asked me to review Just Like Heaven, I passed. He listened thoughtfully to my objections, he nodded (well, it was email, but I could feel him cyber-nodding), and then he told me to go see it anyway. Editors are like that.

I'm starting to think my editor knows something I don't (but don't tell him I said that). Just Like Heaven is a terrific romantic comedy and one of the best times I've had at the movies in a while. It's not perfect. It's not very deep. But it's a whole lot of fun and even a little moving.

Witherspoon (Legally Blond, Sweet Home Alabama) is reliably winsome as Elizabeth Masterson, an empathetic and talented doctor who is pouring her life into medicine. We meet her 23 hours into a shift and watch as she is awarded a much-deserved Attending Physician position and finally calls it a day. The day, it turns out, is night, and a rainy one at that, but the young doctor is in a jubilant mood as she heads to her sister Abby's house to celebrate her new job, dote on her nieces, and meet up with a blind date. Tired, distracted, and needing to adjust the volume on her car stereo, Elizabeth doesn't see an oncoming truck until it's too late. She doesn't make it to dinner.

David (Mark Ruffalo) falls in love with Elizabeth even though he knows that they exist in two different worlds

In the next (seemingly unconnected) scene, we meet David Abbot, a depressed widower looking to sublet an apartment with a decent couch. Nothing feels right, and he's about to give up when a flyer advertising a nearby flat catches a breeze and literally lands in his face. David and his skeptical realtor check out the place—it's impressively decorated, has an astonishing view of the San Francisco Bay and a private rooftop patio to die for. But David can't get past the comfortable couch, and he settles into it and his depression with enough beer and pathos to last him a good long while.

David's misery gets some company, however, when an indignant Elizabeth suddenly appears and asks how on earth the disheveled man on her couch got into her apartment. David assumes at first that there's been a rent scam and an unscrupulous landlord has leased the same space to multiple tenants. But something about Elizabeth just isn't right, and pretty soon David is wondering if the woman who keeps showing up to lecture him about the proper use of a coaster is perhaps a little unbalanced. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is certain the man who has taken over her apartment is a psychiatric patient, and her gentle but patronizing attempt to perform a mental health assessment ("I'm going to ask you a series of questions … ") on an understandably confused David is one of the movie's first truly hilarious scenes.

Elizabeth's 'ethereal quality' convinces David to try to bring her to 'the other side'

Eventually, both would-be occupants of the apartment notice that Elizabeth is unable to touch anything, but is quite able to walk through walls, and David makes the not-so-subtle suggestion that perhaps she's dead. Elizabeth is opposed to this idea and bewildered in general—she can't remember anything about her life and has no idea what might have happened to her. Eventually, David and Elizabeth stop arguing and start working together to try to solve the mystery of who Elizabeth is, and why only David can see her. The ensuing quest is often very funny, thanks in part to a superb supporting cast including Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) as an ultra-laid-back dude with a gift for sensing spirits and Donal Logue (ER, The Patriot) as David's party-hearty psychiatrist buddy. But much of the film's success is owed to Mark Ruffalo (Collateral, 13 Going on 30), who gives David a tremendously appealing vulnerability and reacts to the surreal events around him in a way that makes us laugh and care.

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