MOVIE REVIEW Reese charms in 'Just Like Heaven'

One-liners and Mark Ruffalo's physical comedy also keep us amused.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
"Just Like Heaven" is a sweet little nothing that is barely there, about a girl who isn't there at all.
But since that girl is Reese Witherspoon, we'll happily sit through this "Ghost"/"All of Me" fantasy hokum, because, well, she's just as cute as a button and that just-as-cute Mark Ruffalo is just perfect for her.
The premise
Witherspoon plays an ambitious young San Francisco doctor who works insane hours, but who forgets to squeeze a little personal life in between the life-and-death job.
Then one day that imperfect life, the life not lived, is over.
A morose, hard-drinking landscaper (Ruffalo) moves into her old apartment. She tries to chase him out, but she can't.
She's a "spirit," or some such. He's the only one who can see her. And he's ruining her too-perfect apartment.
"It's like a pig moved into my house," she declares, and can't you just hear her say that? "A filthy pig!"
They spend the rest of the movie trying to work their way around that -- first to see who gets the apartment, then to find out who she is/was, and finally to make a difference in each others' lives.
Just adorable
As gloomy romances go, this one always errs on the side of adorable. Director Mark Waters loses whatever edge he had in "Freaky Friday" and "Mean Girls," and that wasn't much, to turn out a perfectly competent Reese-on-a-pedestal comedy.
She's made-up and lighted with the attention Hefner used to put into centerfolds.
Her Elizabeth is the best-looking spook in the graveyard, if indeed that's where she is.
The "couple" are helped out by a couple of silly supporting players -- Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder is a "dude" who runs an afterlife/conspiracy theory/UFO bookstore. Donal Logue of TV's "Grounded for Life" is a daffy shrink-pal who tries to talk our boy into not seeing things.
And there are just enough one-liners to keep us amused in between Ruffalo's delightful bursts of physical comedy.
He takes falls, acts "possessed" by her when she steps into his body, and does all sorts of goofy stuff that we don't associate with him so long as we remember "In the Cut" and forget "13 Going on 30."
She's charming
And Witherspoon effortlessly charms in that way of hers, so that you know there's a happy ending, even when the movie falls utterly on its face over its own plot devices at about the 45-minute mark.
It's every bit as full of hooey as "Bewitched" or "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," for that matter. And while it may not be "Just Like Heaven," it is movie meringue -- sweet, weightless fun.
You'd have to be satanic to begrudge Ms. Witherspoon that which she does so darned well.