MOVIE REVIEW

Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo have their moments but are done in by a manipulative, cloying script.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo are two of the most appealing and versatile young actors in the movies, and in "Just Like Heaven," which proceeds from one shameless tear-jerking contrivance to the next, they earn every cent of their salaries. They perform this sentimental twaddle with a conviction that borders on the absolute, and they inspire respect for their unshakable professionalism. They actually seem to believe in what they're doing in a movie that's likely to appeal only to the most susceptible and uncritical romantics.

Witherspoon's Elizabeth is a selflessly dedicated and overworked physician on the staff of a San Francisco hospital who has just received an important promotion. She's headed to a blind date when a huge truck collides with her car during a rainstorm, bringing about the circumstances that result in Elizabeth's sister (Dina Waters) subletting Elizabeth's choice apartment, complete with spectacular views and a fireplace in a vintage hillside corner building. Ruffalo's David, a landscape architect unable to shake off the death of his wife two years earlier despite the best efforts of his therapist pal (Donal Logue, always welcome but underused here), is so taken with the attractive apartment that he snaps it up.

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The image of Elizabeth soon appears, demanding to know what David is doing in her place. Before one can say "Blithe Spirit," David realizes that only he can see Elizabeth, who is unaccountably hard to convince that she is but spirit and not flesh. Gradually she accepts her ethereal state, and the two embark on a quest to discover her identity and what happened to her. Predictably, David falls in love with Elizabeth. No amount of twists and turns, most of them labored, in Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon's screenplay based on Marc Levy's novel "If Only It Were True," can deflect "Just Like Heaven's" predictability. Director Mark Waters, who takes a very earnest tone, is not likely to repeat the success of his "Mean Girls," unless Witherspoon's box-office appeal proves truly phenomenal.

There are moments when it is possible, with effort, to forget the plot and its tired premise and enjoy Witherspoon and Ruffalo's chemistry and imagine they are in another movie.

But never for long. There's always another development even less believable than the last to remind one that what's on the screen is inescapably "Just Like Heaven."

'Just Like Heaven'

MPAA rating: PG-13 for some sexual content

Times guidelines: Suitable for teens and adolescents

A DreamWorks Pictures presentation. Director Mark Waters. Producers Laurie MacDonald, Walter Parkes. Screenplay by Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon; based on the novel "If Only It Were True" by Marc Levy. Cinematographer Daryn Okada. Editor Bruce Green. Music Rolfe Kent. Visual effects supervisor John Sullivan. Costumes Sophie de Rakoff. Production designer Cary White. Art director Maria Baker. Set decorator Barbara Haberecht. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes. In general release.