Ladies and gentlemen...ah, who am I kidding. Gentlemen. This Sunday, October 2nd marks the Fall 2005 Pop Culture Fair, an event that I heard through the grapevine was being cancelled this year. But thankfully, I heard wrong. So head down to the Alberta Aviation Museum any time between 10:00 and 4:00, with $4 in your pocket, and scan an airplane hangar for comics, records, cds, figurines, and other collectibles. Surround yourself with nerds in scenes like these. And give me a ride: ETS service sucks on Sundays.
It's worth noting that I'm reviewing this movie after my review of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, in which I gave a mild tongue-lashing to romantic comedies of the cheesy chick-flick variety. I would like to make perfectly clear that I don't hate all romantic comedies: When Harry Met Sally and It Happened One Night are on my list of Top 100 Movies, and I have been pleasantly surprised by a number of others. However, I often take these movies to task for having their hearts in the wrong place, and using film clichés that, when taken to heart buy unsuspecting filmgoers, undermine real relationships. (One of my most memorable movie-watching experiences happened when I laughed uproariously during Bridget Jones's Diary at a part that I thought was being played for laughs, but was apparently dead serious. The rest of the audience was not pleased.) I am a harsh judge of these films, and I make no apologies for it. So, who's ready for some fun?!
The only reasons I went to see Just Like Heaven were: 1) it was free, and 2) my Peach loves Reese Witherspoon, and I figured it was a good date that would make up for the fact that she ends up not liking many of the movies we go see. I wasn't expecting much from it, which was a good thing in hindsight, because there were points when I was actually enjoying myself. It's a passably good movie, and while the flaws aren't fatal, they can certainly maim if you're not careful.
Reese Witherspoon plays Elizabeth, a hospital resident who has given up on the rest of her life in order to do the right thing by her patients. When she is finally rewarded for her 26-hour shifts with a coveted job at her hospital, she (reluctantly) heads to her sister's house for a blind date. David (Mark Ruffalo) is a deeply depressed landscape gardener who now apparently spends all of his time drinking and yet can somehow afford a very nice furnished apartment in San Francisco (which he picked because it has a nice couch to slack on). He would be perfectly content to consume can after can of beer for the rest of his life, but Elizabeth's spirit pops up in the apartment claiming it's hers and that he needs to move out. David figures she's a ghost, but the psychic New Age bookstore owner Darryl (Napoleon Dynamite) thinks otherwise, so the couple go all over town trying to find out exactly what happened to Elizabeth. Will they find out what's going on and fall in love? I won't tell you here, but if you've seen the trailer, or for that matter, any other romantic comedy, I think you know the answer.
The dialogue is sharp and funny, and actually had me laughing out loud. What's more, in the mouths of Witherspoon and Ruffalo (which would make a great name for a 60s folk duo), it actually crackles; they give it more much more substance than it would have if you just read it on the page. What's more, the two actors have so much chemistry that, if they were a couple in real life, would either have spontaneously combusted or reacted and formed a new organic compound. (A sentence that adds more fuel to the "science geeks shouldn't write movie reviews" fire.)
The movie falls down in three places. Firstly, the pace is really wonky. For instance, they drag out the "I'm not a ghost, you're just crazy!" routine waaay too long. I guess they wanted to break the 90 minute barrier or something, but it was too jokey and it played out very quickly. Secondly, the plot is ridiculous; these two people are supposedly intelligent, a doctor and an architect, and they can't figure out how to solve this little mystery? (I know, someone with a 1000+ comic collection calling a movie with a "boy-human meets girl-ghost who's not a ghost" plot is also calling a number of kitchen devices black, but I stand by it.) So many things could have been dealt with if David or Elizabeth had actually sat down and figured out a plan as to how they coudl fix things, but instead they run around town having wacky hijinks and quiet serene moments where they share their feelings. Which doesn't mean they shouldn't be silly and sorrowful, but they could have been smart about it as well. Finally, any movie who does a body-possessing scene runs the risk of being unfavourably compared to the fantastic All Of Me, another man-loves-ghost romantic-comedy. As funny as Mark Ruffalo is, he is no Steve Martin, and I watched the rest of the Just Like Heaven with All Of Me's spectre looming over it.
Just Like Heaven is a better-than-average romantic comedy, which means that it's better than about 55% of the other one out there. I'd give it 3 stars out of 5, but then again, I'm not exactly the target audience. The girls that came to see it with me absolutely loved it, though. My point is: if you're in the mood for a romantic comedy, you could do worse, but if you want to just see a good movie, you could do much better.
The events that lead up to this review actually start way back when Anchorman was first released. As a rule, I can't stand Will Ferrell. I can't remember a single thing he's done that was funny, although to be fair, I haven't seen the infamous "More Cowbell" sketch. What I saw of him from SNL, Old School, the horrendous Zoolander (sorry, Ben), and the MTV Movie Awards...well, it didn't inspire me with confidence. But then it got really good reviews from sources I trusted, and eventually I watched it on DVD. And laughed myself silly. Ferrell was actually funny, the script was loose in parts but still packed with jokes, and the other actors were fantastic. The standout, of course, was Steve Carell as Brick Tamlin, the mentally retarded weather reporter. He nailed the character: his physical humour was top-notch, and every joke rang true because of his great comic timing. (My favourite Brick moment, for the record, is "I stabbed a guy in the heart!") The jokes never went too far into "gaggy' territory, though, thanks to the power of his delivery. He was in the moment every second he was on screen, and it made him the standout actor in the movie.
His performance in The 40-Year-Old Virgin is even better. Carell plays Andy Stitzer, the titular character, who works at an electronics store, has few - if any - friends, and a collection of geeky paraphernalia that anyone in the EGS would gladly give a finger or two for. After his three co-workers (Seth Rogen, Romany Malco, and Paul Rudd) discover that he's a virgin, they give him advice on women, how to score, and relationships. (This would be fine, except that these three men are not exactly doing very well in the relationship front themselves...) Meanwhile, despite his new friends' best efforts, Andy begins a relationship with Trish (Catherine Keener, whom I adore), a woman who runs the "We Sell Your Stuff On EBay" store across the street from Andy's work. The two of them hit it off, and decide to wait twenty dates before having sex. Will the boys get Andy laid before then? Will his inexperience lead to an unsatisfied Trish? Will Paul Rudd continue to do offbeat comedies that get him mainstream recognition as well as indy films that get him critical acclaim? The answers to all those questions, save one, are answered by the end of the movie.
First of all, all the principal actors are top-notch. First of all, Catherine Keener takes the second-hardest role in the movie and knocks it out of the park; she's lovable, she's tender, she's bitchy, she's gorgeous, she's fantastic. I have not seen a movie with her in it without falling over myself in praise of her performance. People, if you haven't seen Living in Oblivion or Being John Malkovitch, do it. (Hell, she was even good in 8mm...) Rudd, Rogen, and Malco take their roles seriously, and do exceptionally well with them. But the movie's shining star is Carell, who makes you actually care about the main character, not just "oh, I hope he does okay" kind of fake-care that you get in most movies. He's charming, sweet, and the best thing is, he doesn't take the fact that he's a virgin as a bad thing: it's the butt of a few jokes, sure, but it's not shameful because he doesn't think to be ashamed of it.
Carell co-wrote the screenplay with director Judd Apatow (of the cult television shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared), and it's a good one. The conversations the men have are real conversations, not ones women want guys to have, and not ones some less comfortable guys would like to admit having. What's more, the situations the characters get into are real, not the low-calorie versions most movies give their audiences. The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a film with many levels: gross-out humour (but very little, I might add), romantic comedy, buddy movie, physical comedy, and a musical number (!!!). This could have been a flat, uninteresting, one-joke movie, and it's to both men's credit that it's so much more.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin is an excellent movie, possibly my favourite of the year so far. It's a good date movie - if the lady half of the date can handle some decidedly "male" moments - but it's a better guy movie. It's the guy version of a chick flick; I would categorize it as a "dick flick", if you can say that without immediately thinking of John Holmes. Leave the girls to their A Lot Like Loves and their The Perfect Mans: I'll take The 40-Year-Old Virgin, some popcorn, and a beer - if I can have the beer beforehand.
