From the Friday, Feb. 1 Oregonian....
"Over Her Dead Body" is yet another romantic comedy in which the filmmakers think a clever premise precludes the hard work of developing that premise.
To be fair, the pitch meeting for this was probably awesome: "What if a Bridezilla was killed on her wedding day by a falling ice sculpture and walked the earth as a ghost? And what if she decided her 'unfinished business' was 'protecting' her fiancé by destroying his budding romance with the cute psychic he's using to contact Bridezilla?"
Hilarious! Especially if you follow that pitch meeting up with the very real, very hard work of crafting vivid characters, crackling dialogue and funny gags. Unfortunately, writer/director Jeff Lowell makes the same mistake he did when he wrote "John Tucker Must Die": He suggests another, funnier and more provocative movie inside the one we're actually watching.
For example: The idea of a ghostly, ultra-demanding Bridezilla who tests even an angel's patience after being violently denied her big princess day suggests all sorts of comic possibilities. And casting frighteningly tan Eva Longoria in that role is a stroke of mild genius. But her war with the psychic (Lake Bell) -- the only person who can see and hear her -- is completely unimaginative. Mostly, Longoria makes a bunch of loud noises to irritate Bell while she's trying to make love to the fiancé (Paul Rudd) or sleep. At one point, Longoria makes a bunch of loud farting noises to make Bell think Rudd is flatulent. Uh, really? Is that really the best you could do?
"I never thought farts were funny when I was still alive," says Longoria afterward. They still aren't, honey.
Also unfunny: the movie's unfortunate reliance on easy slapstick -- up to and including a mustard-squirting joke and a loud offscreen crashing noise after someone stumbles out of frame with a heavy dog. There's also a vast subplot involving Jason Biggs as Bell's gay assistant that gets so complicated, Lowell should have saved it for another movie. Even the normally brilliant Stephen Root follows his blah turn in "Mad Money" with a blah turn here as a drunk ice sculptor.
To be fair, Rudd and Bell are cute and funny in their scenes together, and Judd Apatow regular Rudd salvages a few laughs with his deadpan line readings. The actor has built his comic persona on a sort of detached boredom. It's just unfortunate that the audience shares this emotion whenever he's offscreen.
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C-minus; 95 minutes; rated PG-13 for sexual content and language.
'Over Her Dead Body' (The Oregonian, Feb. 1, 2008)
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