DVD of the Week
#14 – Just Like Heaven (Mark Waters, 2005)I like Reese Witherspoon. I really do. Charismatic and appealing, with considerable range and a little round chin, she's one of the only contemporary mainstream performers comparable with stars of decades past. And by decades past I mean the '30s (Gary Cooper, William Powell,
Myrna Loy) and not the '80s (Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Pee-Wee Herman).
I only wish her romantic comedies were better.
Well, this week my wish came true (this doesn't really make sense), as I got around to seeing
Just Like Heaven, which is probably the best mainstream romcom of the decade so far. And the caveat's only there because there are a few I haven't seen yet.
Miss Congeniality,
Miss Congeniality 2,
Miami Vice...
Witherspoon, her boundless charm and little round chin intact, plays a workaholic doctor. Leaving the hospital late – as usual – we see her fiddling with her car radio then ploughing, headfirst, into an oncoming lorry. Some months later she reappears in our story, mysteriously materialising in the home of slovenly, beer-swilling Mark Ruffalo, who's taken Witherspoon's old apartment.
Ruffalo is familiar to arthouse chaps as the exhilarating one from
You Can Count on Me. (I thought that was a truly great film until I caught
In My Father's Den and saw that it followed a similar path, but took the more difficult option at each turn, like when Matthew Macfadyen is kicked down a flight of stairs by an abusive stepfather. In the earlier film Ruffalo gives comparable baddie Josh Lucas the beating of a lifetime.)
In
Just Like Heaven, Ruffalo appears to be doing a Marlon Brando impression for the first 10 minutes, but it soon emerges that he does know how to do romantic comedy and that it was just part of his character. Phew. As it happens, he has a real gift for the genre, with an unexpectedly fine sense of comic timing that allows him to milk the film's set-pieces for all they're worth.
Witherspoon's fleeting appearances in Ruffalo's home lead him to worry that he may be mentally ill following the trauma of his wife's death (both themes are handled sensitively, with one slight exception, though I think the term "lunatic" is bandied around fairly freely by a lot of people). He then happens upon another possibility – Witherspoon is dead and the apparition that keeps imploring him to use coasters is a ghost.
Reese doesn't like the idea that she's copped it, so the pair decide to get to the bottom of the matter, ultimately aided by Ruffalo's feckless buddy (Donal Logue) and an affable stoner type who runs a bookshop on weird phenomena (who else but
Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder? No-one else, it turns out. It's him.). And slowly but surely the lead pair fall in love.
There are some excellent set-pieces. The scene in which Witherspoon (invisible to other customers) wrestles Ruffalo out of a bar is a gem – owing a visible debt (chuckle) to the
Topper series of the '30s, which used a similar trick dozens of times – though it's topped by a hilarious sequence that sees Ruffalo called upon to save a man's life in a restaurant. As Witherspoon coaches him through the procedure, he parrots her advice, attracting an increasingly bemused reaction from onlookers.
The film has a lovely feel about it, with ambitious plotting (slightly reminiscent of
Here Comes Mr Jordan) that's far superior to standard romcom fare, and a screenplay that's frequently extremely funny. And then there are the leads: not only excellent on their own terms, but conjuring an appealing and convincing chemistry that's become exceedingly rare in this largely dead genre.
It's a really great film.
DVD of the Week archive:
#1 - Let's Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)
#2 - Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)
#3 - The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
#4 - The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)
#5 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
#6 - Written and Directed by Preston Sturges (Preston Sturges, 1940-44)
#7 – The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)#8 - Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)#9 - Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005)#10 - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005)#11 - Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)#12 – A Star Is Born (George Cukor, 1954)#13 - Lady on a Train (Charles David, 1945)
