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# This ‘Heaven’ can definitely wait
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/this-heaven-can-definitely-wait-2/
- Published: 2005-09-16T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:47:44.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Manly men be forewarned: Getting dragged to see “Just Like Heaven” by a significant other is going to feel a lot like hell within the first 15 minutes. The film opens with Reese Witherspoon’s overworked ER physician daydreaming about love in an efflorescent oasis while crooner Katie Melua, who’s being hyped as the “next Norah Jones” (as if one Norah Jones isn’t enough at this point) butchers The Cure classic for which the film is named. Then America’s Sweetheart, M.D., wakes up and charms the pants, literally in one instance, off her patients while former Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley gives Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” the Lilith Fair treatment.

OK, so Reese Witherspoon is awfully cute and Mark Ruffalo delivers a spirited performance in a challenging role (you try keeping a straight face in the midst of such mawkishness, tough guy!) but the narrative is a sickly sweet hodgepodge of maudlin romantic comedy conventions … sans comedy, and with a dreadfully unconvincing romance. Director Mark Waters’ (“Mean Girls”) attempts to tug on the heart-strings are labored and ineffectual, and for a host of reasons — the weak script foremost among them — his charismatic leads fail to develop well-rounded characters.

Reese’s Elizabeth doesn’t have time for a life, and by the end of an exhausting 26-hour shift she’s none too stoked about the blind date her sister (Dina Waters) has orchestrated. En route, a head-on collision with a truck puts an end to Elizabeth and the rendezvous with Mr. May-Be-Right … or does it? Widower David (Ruffalo) is a landscape architect (a tres chic chick flick profession) still drowning his sorrows two years after his wife’s passing. He moves into a fantastic San Francisco flat, where he encounters Elizabeth’s nagging ghost. At first, she thinks she’s still alive, and he wonders if he’s gone totally bonkers. But they quickly figure things out, and despite all their obligatory bickering and the fact that she’s, you know, dead, fall head over heels. Of course supernatural love ain’t easy, but when there’s a will, there’s a cheesy plot device to make it happen. (Rated PG-13 for some sexual content. Running time: 94 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 16, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091605.pdf?ref=smdp.com)