10/03/06 Just Like Heaven

Just Like Heaven (2005), directed by Mark S. Waters

watched w/ Leslie; DVD (borrowed from Rebecca) @ home

Again, another seemingly sappy love story...that basically takes elements from "While You Were Sleeping" and "Ghost"...and introduces them to the artfully twisted director of both "The House Of Yes" and "Mean Girls." It's the latter of those two comparisons that drew me more to this project, and probably why my movie tastes mesh well enough with Leslie's. This is not your basic love affair here, as the story pits Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo in a very unique and compromising situation. It all starts when workaholic young doctor Elizabeth (Witherspoon) is involved in a terrible car accident on her way to her sister's, where she was to be set up on a blind date. However, after the accident, Elzabeth slips into a coma and is feared to be dying. Her family must deal with the fact that she may not live, and sublets her apartment in order to pay some of the pending medical bills. The man that rents the apartment is landscape architect David (Ruffalo), who upon moving in soon finds himself face to face with the spirit of Elizabeth. What Elizabeth doesn't know however, is that she is in fact a spirit, stuck between both worlds because she is in a coma. With her ghostly amnesia, and David's recent trauma at losing his ex-wife, he believes he's delusional and must fight to live a normal life. The odd pairing of Elizabeth and David move from an initial relationship of mutual animosity towards the other's situation, soon becomes a loving bond the two share in compatability and the unifying search to find out what exactly happened to Elizabeth and how to save her from life-support. Racing against time, the two go through wacky capers in order to find the truth, and mess with fate. It's a bit silly to think about, but sappy or not, it can be a moving little film. Waters' brand of off-kilter approaches to mainstream movie-making is not lost from his "House Of Yes" days...as the love stories always seem to have some sort of dark undertone to them. I don't want to ruin it for all of you die-hard (oops, is that the wrong choice of words when someone's in a coma?) romance fans out there...but the two must awaken Elizabeth's spirit into her real body, only to have her amnesia jump ship to reality and forget who David was. Everything comes back into focus when she realizes that the man she was originally meant to be set-up with on the blind date was in fact...you could have guessed it, but damn if it isn't bittersweet to the end. With support roles by the morally lacking best friend Jack (Donal Logue) and spaced-out new-age book store worker Darryl (Jon Heder), the quirky love story works for me.

3 out of 5 stars