Autumn will be here in less than a week, that could only mean one thing: "romantic comedy season playing in a theater near you." Well, if Mark Water's latest offering Just Like Heaven is any indication of the quality we should be expecting, then we're in for a honey sweet (not saccharine) autumn rom-coms this year. Water, fresh off the blockbuster pair Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, teamed up with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo in this girl-is-a-ghost-guy-is heartbroken-guy-and-girl-fall-in-love-against-all-odds-miracle-happens flick.

Hey, it might not be original (see Ghost, City of Angels), it might not be unpredictable (let's just say it involves destiny), nor might it be logically-sound (try to overlook this and you'll enjoy this confection more), but who cares as long as they did a great job in concocting a tried-and-true formula? Sometimes all you want is just a good juicy hamburger, not some kind of smörgåsbord with caspian roe and dom perignon.


Witherspoon & Ruffalo definitely got plenty of chemistry to make the story works, you'd be hard pressed not to root for them and wish that for once the stars will all align and the lovers can finally be together. The characters themselves are well-written, instead of giving us these unbelievably goodlooking singles who in a bizarre alternate reality can't seem to get a date, we got these two (still amazingly attractive) people who are alone because of actual, valid reasons (elizabeth's job & david's tragedy).

Logical issues aside (Elizabeth must be a millionaire to have that apartment), Just Like Heaven felt like fresh air. It's light, sweet, and, I have to mention this even though the oxygen analogy doesn't go this far, damn funny! It's one of those films that you'd go to because you just want to escape for 90 minutes and relax, instead of the movie you have to see because of this and that. Well, someone could hire an actual artist (from the current time period preferably, not the early 90's) to fix the poster, but on the other hand the vanilla poster might actually help the movie's understated image which wouldn't scare away people who are tired of the bombastically-promoted blockbusters.