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“Just Like Heaven” Directed by: Mark Waters

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Jon Heder (quick—name his last film), Dina Waters and Donal Loque

Rating: PG-13 (for mild sexual innuendo)

Running time: 98 minutes

Best suited for: the romantic sap Least suited for: the sapless Acorn’s Rating Guide:

This one reduced my wife to a sniveling puddle of goo. It’s a onehanky, implausibly sentimental “feel-good” ghost flick that breaks just enough rules to trigger one’s suspension of disbelief. I can’t imagine some studio exec giving the pitch a go-ahead because there seem to be so many valid reasons why it absolutely couldn’t and shouldn’t work.

But, lo and behold, “Just Like Heaven” works rather nicely.

For what it’s worth, I tend to compare any romantic ghost story to the modern daddy of the genre, 1990’s appropriately named “Ghost”—or for that matter, to the granddaddy of the ethereally romantic farce, 1937’s stillsplendid “Topper,” with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. Held aloft to such pedigree, “Just Like Heaven” manages to hold its own.

The film begins a little slowly for my tastes. Reese Witherspoon plays Elizabeth, an ambitious San Francisco intern, too busy for love or fun. On the way to her first blind date in apparently forever, she’s smooshed by a truck, à la Meg Ryan in “City of Angels.” In ghost stories, trucks rule.

Enter David (Mark Ruffalo), a lonely widower who’s apartment hunting, still bitter and lonely two years after the loss of his wife. Fortuitous circumstance (or perhaps a bit of playful cinematic magic) causes David to lease Elizabeth’s furnished apartment—where he proceeds to indulge in binges of alcoholic self-pity. When an ethereal Elizabeth appears to oust him from her premises, David’s utterly confounded, and more than slightly spooked.

Reese Witherspoon as perky intern worked well enough for me; Reese Witherspoon as perky apparition did not. There seems an awkward interlude as she tries to convince herself (or the audience) that she’s properly incensed at this stranger’s nocturnal intrusion. Come home to a guy watching your TV in his PJs, drinking a 12pack, and I doubt you’d be complacently philosophical. At that point, I suspected “Just Like Heaven” might become another silly superficial throwaway—a trite antithesis of intelligent ghost films like “Truly Madly Deeply” or the wildly comedic, albeit utterly romantic, “Beetlejuice.”

But in “Just Like Heaven” the appropriately confused Ruffalo pulls off a coup. Thanks to some witty repartee, the subsequent scenes jell and Witherspoon manages to find her corporeally challenged wit. With the help of a psychic book salesman, played with aplomb by a delightfully spacey Jon Heder—of recent “Napoleon Dynamite” fame—David tries to convince Elizabeth that she’s no longer among the living. Elizabeth refuses to go quietly away.

Despite the film’s obsession with death, “Just Like Heaven” is remarkably feather-light and, in places, ingeniously funny. When David and the clinging Elizabeth form an uneasy truce—well, that’s when things take off.

The film manages to be appropriately tender in the right places, and the ambitious script concocts enough twists and turns to keep the couple’s impossible relationship fresh and engaging. Ruffalo maintains that guy-you’d-love-tomarry persona (uh, my feminine side speaking here) with an underplayed charisma that some might remember from “13 Going On 30.”

For my money, Ruffalo’s likely to become Hollywood’s next Tom Hanks (now that Tom Hanks is rich and famous and somewhere north of 40). Guys in the audience aren’t intimidated and, according to my wife, he’s filmdom’s newest “nice guy,” with that oh-so-important hint of vulnerability.

Those aforementioned cinematic twists have always worked well in adventure thrillers and scifi but are so often lacking in romantic comedies. It’s quite nice to find them here aplenty. The script drives “Just Like Heaven” forward, alternating sappy hanky moments with laugh-aloud segments.

Just when you think you have the film figured, it veers a hard left or a quick right and sends you in another direction. Any film that can pull the rug out so frequently deserves attention. To the romantic saps among us, I say, go for it. “Just Like Heaven” won’t disappoint.

In a nutshell: “Just Like Heaven” may be the best ghostly rom-com to hit theaters in quite awhile. Despite a hesitant start, it blossoms into a tale of ethereal love that will enthrall the romantically inclined. Sure it’s overt sentimentality, but when it works, why quibble?

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