I’m back in my rom-com binge era. And this time I’m finding some hidden gems from the 90s and 2000s when some of the leading Hollywood actors who are not on the frontline anymore, were at their best. I stumbled upon ‘Just Like Heaven’ on Netflix starring Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon. The thumbnail description was enticing enough for me to jump into it.
Reese plays a passionate doctor, Elizabeth, who has absolutely no time for personal life. Needless to say, romance in non-existent in her life but one unfortunate night she’s set up with a blind date by her sister. Heading into the night, she meets with an accident and there the interesting turn of events begin.
David (Mark Ruffalo), a widower now isolated from the world thanks to his grief moves into Elizabeth’s apartment following her accident and consequential absence from the apartment. However, she’s not really absent; she shows up. Funnily, however, she shows up at inconsistent intervals to freak him out, and apparently is just seen by him; and when he tries to explain to her that she’s not exactly who she thinks she is anymore, she clings to him because she has nowhere else to go.
Elizabeth is perhaps dead, and its her soul/ghost that apparently cannot walk into the light that’s stuck at her old apartment, now with David. Elizabeth’s ghost version and David have a little adventure figuring out who she is because she cannot remember a thing, and naturally end up falling in love through the uniquely fulfilling process of finding her. Fancy falling in love with a ghost.
(Spoiler ahead)
Turns out that Elizabeth wasn’t dead after all, but had fallen into a coma state and could not reconnect with her body that was being preserved at the hospital she worked at. Her colleagues and her sister ultimately decide that they will honour her former wish to not medically prolong her life in case of a situation exactly like this – and David and Elizabeth have to hurry. The climax has a fun and heart-warming series of events that ultimately lead to their happy ending.
I cannot get enough of movies like Just Like Heaven. They’re so effortlessly beautiful, fun and even memorable. The actors do such great justice to their roles with heart-warming simplicity and authenticity. Rom-coms of this generation were top-notch and the ones that came after 2010 have had a tough time keeping up to their level. The modern ones feel like they try too hard and fall short, while the older ones were naturally beautiful and easily left a mark.
Not to mention that Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon make an unconventionally attractive couple who have truly delivered this film. The element of the ghost of an alive person meeting the love of her life while her body is comatose would otherwise have been a difficult subject to convince; I think that the casting has done the magic.
I’ll be writing about more rom-coms I’m watching on spree. Meanwhile, here are some old, all-time favourites:
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