Just Like Hell
Last night my wife and I went with our friends to the drive-in for a double feature: Flight Plan, the Jodie Foster thriller (Panic Room on a plane, essentially), and Just Like Heaven, the romantic "comedy" featuring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. Flight Plan was a bit silly, as psychological thrillers often are (how did the baddies come up with such a ridiculously baroque evil plan?), but it kept our interest: Jodie Foster breaks down compellingly, and Peter Sarsgaard is the new John Malkovich: magnetic and eerily cool.
But Just Like Heaven was the worst movie I've seen since I suffered through Serendipity a few years ago. The script contains more cliches than a Hallmark store: Witherspoon is a workaholic doctor who doesn't know what's important in life (apparently, it's not a fulfilling career, foolish mortals), and Ruffalo is a sad-sack landscape architect who has replaced his dead wife with cheap beer. When Witherspoon's character falls into a coma after a car accident, her family sublets her apartment--to Ruffalo. Coincidence? No way. The pair reaquaint each other with life (get it? Ruffalo's alive, but he's really dead inside. Get it?) and eventually--believe it or not--fall in love.
It might seem unsettling to think that your family may sublet your apartment while you're unconscious in a hospital bed, but hey--if it allows your free-roaming spirit to meet the perfect mate, who cares?
The film creates a bizarre world that's half Grey's Anatomy and half Beauty and the Beast, in which normal social conventions do not apply. In one scene, when a restaurant patron collapses, a ghostly Witherspoon coaches Ruffalo through a daring life-saving procedure involving a bottle of vodka and a sharp paring knife. The attending crowd seems unconcerned as, before saving the man's life, Ruffalo rambles wildly, seemingly to himself, and takes a long pull on the vodka bottle. No one seems to mind that this self-proclaimed doctor looks a lot like a schitzophrenic drunk.
Nor does the movie abide by its own physical laws: though Witherspoon can walk through walls and furniture, she can stand on floors and ride in cars. Hmm.
This morning's New York Times contained an article about the appearance of conservative ideology in Hollywood films. The first film mentioned? Just Like Heaven, in which the spirit of the comatose Witherspoon tries desperately to avoid having her plug pulled by her well-meaning sister. The argument could be clearer only if the character's name were Terri Schiavo.
Witherspoon and Ruffalo are both cool and funny, and neither deserves this fate: to wander the discount DVD racks eternally, rattling the chains of their bad decisions, lamenting the death of their hipness. Walmart clerks will wonder each morning who replaced the copies of Just Like Heaven with Election and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
But Just Like Heaven was the worst movie I've seen since I suffered through Serendipity a few years ago. The script contains more cliches than a Hallmark store: Witherspoon is a workaholic doctor who doesn't know what's important in life (apparently, it's not a fulfilling career, foolish mortals), and Ruffalo is a sad-sack landscape architect who has replaced his dead wife with cheap beer. When Witherspoon's character falls into a coma after a car accident, her family sublets her apartment--to Ruffalo. Coincidence? No way. The pair reaquaint each other with life (get it? Ruffalo's alive, but he's really dead inside. Get it?) and eventually--believe it or not--fall in love.
It might seem unsettling to think that your family may sublet your apartment while you're unconscious in a hospital bed, but hey--if it allows your free-roaming spirit to meet the perfect mate, who cares?
The film creates a bizarre world that's half Grey's Anatomy and half Beauty and the Beast, in which normal social conventions do not apply. In one scene, when a restaurant patron collapses, a ghostly Witherspoon coaches Ruffalo through a daring life-saving procedure involving a bottle of vodka and a sharp paring knife. The attending crowd seems unconcerned as, before saving the man's life, Ruffalo rambles wildly, seemingly to himself, and takes a long pull on the vodka bottle. No one seems to mind that this self-proclaimed doctor looks a lot like a schitzophrenic drunk.
Nor does the movie abide by its own physical laws: though Witherspoon can walk through walls and furniture, she can stand on floors and ride in cars. Hmm.
This morning's New York Times contained an article about the appearance of conservative ideology in Hollywood films. The first film mentioned? Just Like Heaven, in which the spirit of the comatose Witherspoon tries desperately to avoid having her plug pulled by her well-meaning sister. The argument could be clearer only if the character's name were Terri Schiavo.
Witherspoon and Ruffalo are both cool and funny, and neither deserves this fate: to wander the discount DVD racks eternally, rattling the chains of their bad decisions, lamenting the death of their hipness. Walmart clerks will wonder each morning who replaced the copies of Just Like Heaven with Election and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
posted by Shane @ 9:57 AM
1 Comments:
At 11:47 PM,
Anonymous said…
Though it certainly isn't an apples-for-apples comparison, Blacky's pointed and poignant (Mark Ruffalo's Ghost of Hipness Past wandering the DVD aisles of Wal-Mart? Oh, the humanity!) lumping of "Just Like Heaven" into the "Serendipity" category triggered a thought in ol' Willie's shiny Scottish noggin.
Just as the Fonz once jumped a shark in an attempt to regain TV ratings (simultaneously dooming his own, once seemingly unbreachable, cool to the Pamida Betamax aisle AND spawning a fine pop culture critic's phrase), Ruffalo and Witherspoon have tossed the glove. Because, for me, drilling a perfect, land-softly-on-John Cusack's chest-with a woolen glove strike from 50 yards out is essentially the same thing as having a ghost that can walk through walls and stand on floors.
To recap: losing one's TV cool = jumping the shark; losing one's cinematic cool = tossing the glove.
I leave the well-connected folk at DBE world headquarters with a final plea: would you please, please try to save Kate Hudson? There is good in her. I can see it...in repeat viewings of Almost Famous.
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