Just Like Heaven: Critic Reviews

Playing a San Francisco doctor whose devotion to work and family has left her no time for romance, the star hustles like Tinkerbell to keep the mood light.

Given its somewhat morbid premise, this metaphysical second-chance comedy is impressively nimble and cheery.

[Mark Waters] has pretty well delivered just what young PG-13 girls carrying that extra pack of Kleenex will expect.

Just Like Heaven turns into a bait-and-switch of a movie, wrapping weirdly maudlin speculation inside the candy coating of a frothy romance.

The movie wants all you girls to know that should medical misfortune come your way, just hold on. Your soul will find your soul mate, then love will set you free.

This screwball comedy, initially promising, dies a painful death once the politicking begins.

Just Like Heaven could be the perfect balm for post-Katrina movie audiences in search of a little levity.

Like all ghost movies, the premise of Just Like Heaven is wraith-thin.

Can one movie support these many coincidences and close calls and misunderstandings? Yes. The movie works, and so we accept everything.

Just Like Heaven is a huge waste of talent (Witherspoon's) and time (ours), a supernatural romantic comedy that is neither romantic, comedic, super or natural.

Romance isn't alive but on life support in Just Like Heaven, a groaningly awful romantic comedy.

Just Like Heaven isn't a groundbreaking movie -- where romantic comedy is concerned, there isn't much ground left to break -- but it contains some nice moments and fresh twists.

If heaven is a big ball of cotton candy, then Just Like Heaven lives up to its name. It has no nutritional value, and it won't fill you up, but it's bright, pink and fluffy.

The film is as insubstantial as the clouds on the poster.

See two charming characters make beautiful music together.

Considerably more mushy than madcap, Just Like Heaven is as uneven as the topography of its San Francisco locales, but the amiable peaks mostly offset the flat stretches and valleys.

Starts out glib and gimmicky but later digs surprisingly deep.

Just Like Heaven is a sweet little nothing that is barely there, about a girl who isn't there at all.

Closer to hell, really.

What a disappointment then to report that Just Like Heaven is more like purgatory.

Just Like Heaven is really nothing more than your standard love-from-beyond-the-grave squishfest (even though the heroine isn't actually dead) done up in the dumb bonnet-and-bloomers get-up of contemporary romantic comedy.

Rarely humorous, rarely romantic, and rarely affecting.

Crossing the life-death divide, Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo are a winning pair in this smart and tender comedy.

A movie that's likely to appeal only to the most susceptible and uncritical romantics.