Sunday, June 15, 2008
Over Her Dead Body
***½ Over Her Dead Body. Romantic comedy.
Directed by: Jeff Lowell.
Starring: Eva Longoria Parker, Paul Rudd, Lake Bell, Jason Biggs, Lindsay Sloane
We saw this at the Hercules.
Kate (Eva Longoria Parker) is killed by an ice sculpture on her wedding day. Henry (Paul Rudd), her groom-to-be, is pining away and not moving on with his life. So his sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) takes him to see psychic Ashley (Lake Bell) in the hopes that she'll tell him that Kate wants him to go on living.
The problem with this is that Ashley can actually see Kate, and Kate doesn't want him to get on with his life. Particularly not with Ashley.
There's additional conflict when Chloe gives Ashley inside info to make the spiel more convincing, so Chloe doesn't believe that Ashley's truly interested in Henry.
And there's additional comic relief in the form of Ashley's assistant Dan (Jason Biggs) who's been in love with her for years, and has pretended to be gay to stay near her.
There were some laughs, and the main conflict was a good one. Kate was horribly unlikeable, but that was okay--she was bitchy and possessive, things that didn't make me question why nice guy Henry had been marrying her. And her afterlife experiences fit so well with her character. What I didn't buy was her turnaround at the end of the movie. It didn't make sense. It's like they couldn't figure out how to end it, or they decided they'd made her too bitchy, so they did a sort of "we were just kidding--she's really a nice person at heart" at the end.
And then the assistant's character pretending to be gay for years. It just didn't work. I admit, I did laugh a couple of times about his situation, and I can see how one thing can lead to another, but ultimately, the balance came down more on the side of pathetic than funny or sympathetic.
All in all, not a horrible movie, but not one I'd recommend going out of your way to see.
Categories: Movies, 3.5stars, RomanticComedy
Labels: 3.5 stars, Movies, RomanticComedy
