Movie Reviews

Dale Robinette /New Line Cinema/Gold Circle Films

Review in a Hurry:  Housewife or not, you'd have to be desperate to enjoy this clumsy supernatural comedy, dogged by truly lifeless plotting and a near-total lack of chemistry. A Razzie award is about the only thing small-screen defector Eva Longoria Parker deserves for the leap.

The Bigger Picture:  If it's dead people you wanna see, stick with the latest Sixth Sense copycat or gore-spattered zombie epic. Even the most banal brain eater would make better date-night company than pretty much anyone in Over Her Dead Body, a shoddy and self-conscious romantic comedy about a feisty phantom named Kate (Longoria Parker) who died on her wedding day and is now heaven-bent on keeping her fiancé single.

What starts as a dim premise unfolds into an even dimmer rivalry between Kate and Ashley (Lake Bell), a part-time psychic who finds herself falling hard for would-be widower Henry (Paul Rudd).

Cue Kate's spectral campaign to put the kibosh on their smoldering sparks. You could call it a love triangle if not for the fact that these characters are largely unlovable. Neither Bell nor Rudd is short on charisma, but writer-director Jeff Lowell hamstrings the natural appeal of his stars with some deeply potholed dialogue and slapdash camerawork.

Jason Biggs fails to stem the suckitude as Ashley's hapless guy-pal, though his use of an earring to exemplify his character's gayness shows a level of physical dedication unseen since, oh, De Niro in Raging Bull.

In an alternate indie-flick universe, Dead Body might have been successfully spun as a smart, winking send-up of post-Ghost love stories that could still fondle our heartstrings with an earnest riff or two on romance and the afterlife. Instead, Lowell unfurls a 95-minute string of cinematic charley horses, straining to inject passably quirky humor into a series of lame setups, telegraphed sight gags and low-rent emotional resolutions.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  As seen in offbeat winners like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Paul Rudd has dryly hilarious comic chops to spare. While he's clearly slumming it in this crappy contrivance, it's a comfort to watch him make it to the end credits with his wit and most of his dignity intact.