Just Like Heaven (2005)

Both Just Like Heaven and Return to Me are winsome romantic comedies with at least a hint of the supernatural, and address death and loss as well as love and laughter. Both are wiser than the average date movie about the temptation to withdraw from life and human relationships in the face of grief, and also about the annoyance of well-meaning friends trying to draw one out for one’s own good.

Both films are also chaste romances about a couple who fall in love without tumbling into the sack. Indeed, this isn’t even a possibility in Just Like Heaven (though the film does include some decidedly unchaste behavior from a supporting character, as well as a good bit of rude dialogue.)

What Return to Me has that Just Like Heaven doesn’t is its affectionately depicted context of Irish-Italian culture and Catholic piety. On the other hand, while Return to Me has raised problems for some Catholics with respect to moral issues of life and death, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Just Like Heaven is its distinctly life-affirming, even pro-life twist with respect to end-of-life issues. Here is a light comedy that — without remotely getting maudlin or morbid — dramatizes how

• a person not yet incapacitated is in no position to sign away life-sustaining measures in case they should ever become incapacitated, since what they would actually want under the circumstances may well be completely different from how they feel now;
• incapacitated patients may be more aware of events around them than we might give them credit for;
• doctors who compassionately counsel pulling the plug may not be giving family members the straight facts; and
• family members need to resist such pressure and defend the rights of their loved ones.

Waters’ previous hit comedies, Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, each had their problems, but boasted smart scripts and assured direction as well as solid performances from talented stars. Just Like Heaven may be lighter and more formulaic than his earlier films, but it has the same basic strengths.

The film benefits greatly from its appealing stars, Witherspoon and Ruffalo. Witherspoon, especially, shines as Elizabeth, a dedicated but overworked young ER doctor who has no life outside the hospital walls, until that life is taken away from her in a way she can’t understand.

Ruffalo brings brooding charisma to the role of David, a withdrawn young man who seems to have no connection to anything or anything, except that he seems to have a connection somehow to Elizabeth, who mysteriously appears out of nowhere in his apartment — or is he in her apartment? No one knows but Darryl (Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder in a similarly surreal supporting role), a kind of stoner Zen-talking clerk in an occult bookstore (he’s sort of the counterpart to Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost).

The themes of the workaholic professional who needs to find a life outside the workplace and the withdrawn loner who needs to rejoin the human race are common ones in comedies, but they’re developed here with more conviction than usual. The script is smarter than the typical rom-com, and Waters directs cannily, never letting either the emotion or the comedy get out of control. (A late-breaking plot twist had the potential to go completely off the rails, but Waters gets exactly as much humor out of it as possible and then stops.)

Plotwise, the film is refreshingly clever about the dilemma of characters dealing with an extraordinary situation that they will have trouble convincing other people is real. I appreciate the forethought David puts into what he will need to say to one of Elizabeth’s relatives in order to persuade her that he isn’t crazy — and also how the conversation doesn’t quite go as planned.

It’s not without drawbacks. In contrast to the positive Catholic milieu of Return to Me, Just Like Heaven turns to Catholicism only for a satiric punchline, with a brief parody of a scene from The Exorcist (along with Ghostbusters). To be fair, it’s more a movie joke than a religion joke, but it’s still in wincingly poor taste. And the aforementioned unchaste behavior from a supporting character, a temptress neighbor of David’s, goes further than it needed to (though nothing happens and her behavior isn’t condoned).

Some viewers may also be turned off by the flaky new-age spin on the movie’s circumstances represented by Darryl. For me, though, any misgiving about the film’s spirituality is short-circuited, first of all, by the way things turn out not to be quite what you might expect, and also by the sheer goofiness Heder brings to Darryl. Clearly it’s all a fantasy conceit; the movie isn’t in the least making a serious statement about spirituality, as it is with respect to end-of-life issues.

What makes Just Like Heaven even more notable is the remarkable dearth of decent romantic comedies in the five years since Return to Me. In that time Hollywood has churned out a steady stream of disposable date movies featuring likable stars in variously tepid, embarrassing or downright insulting stories: 13 Going on 30, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Maid in Manhattan, Kate & Leopold. (Okay, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was all right, but that was technically an indie film.)

Just Like Heaven is the first Hollywood film since Return to Me that I would put in the same league as that earlier film, and that’s saying something.