A bride on her wedding day, fussing over her wedding arrangements like the textbook control freak that she is, has a bizarre, fatal accident just before the ceremony. A decorative, wingless angel-shaped ice sculpture falls off the back of a truck, crushes her, and sends her to the Great Beyond. When she gets wind of the fact that her intended is now intending to romance someone else, she returns from limbo to sabotage the relationship.
That’s the premise of the romantic fantasy-comedy, Over Her Dead Body, which isn’t exactly dead but never comes to full-blown life either.
Eva Longoria Parker (as she’s billed) plays Kate, the now-dead bride-to-not-be, who was engaged to marry an easygoing veterinarian played by Paul Rudd.
To help her brother cope with Kate’s death and get on with his romantic life, Henry’s sister, played by Lindsay Sloane, convinces him to get beyond his skepticism about the supernatural world and go to a psychic named Ashley, played by Lake Bell, who also runs a catering enterprise with her clumsy gay business partner, played by Jason Biggs.
Henry doesn’t think much of Ashley’s powers, but he thinks plenty about Ashley herself. And she him.
This does not sit well with Kate, whose death has not exactly short-circuited her feelings of jealousy and territoriality. So she materializes and appears to Ashley – who assumes that her psychic gifts have kicked into overdrive – and threatens to put the kibosh on the budding relationship.
Jeff Lowell, who also wrote the screenplay (working titles included How I Met My Boyfriend’s Dead Fiancee and Ghost Bitch), makes his directorial debut in competent but humdrum, connect-the-dots fashion: The narrative is workmanlike, but there’s just no comic electricity to exchanges that should snap, crackle, and pop.
And touches as forced as, say, the only-in-a-movie plot twist involving Jason Biggs reveal a lack of internal logic that undermines the film’s already shaky hold on our suspended disbelief.
There are sporadic grace notes and clever touches, but they’re scattered throughout and separated by curious dead spots that need either a script touch-up or an infusion of comic energy.
Ms. Longoria Parker would appear to be appearing in her first starring big-screen role, but it turns out to be a supporting turn. The star of TV’s Desperate Housewives here plays a Desperate Dead Almost-Wife. She doesn’t quite embarrass herself, but she’s a shallow performer, severely lacking in nuance, who poses and acts as if her good looks alone will carry the day.
They don’t.
Her co-stars – Rudd, Bell, Biggs, and Sloane – are better suited to this kind of broad farce. And to not much surprise, the best parts of the movie are those that don’t involve the ostensible lead.
Come to think of it, there’s not much in the way of chemistry between any of the on-screen pairings: Everyone in this bland concoction works much too hard to far too little effect. No one really connects with anyone else.
Comedy with this fragile a central conceit must look effortlessly sprightly to work, and OHDB is anything but.
The spirit, in other words, can’t just be willing. It’s got to be blithe too. Here all it is is weak. So we’ll haunt 2 stars out of 4 for the sputtering supernatural afterlife comedy, Over Her Dead Body.
Did I hate it?
No.
Do I recommend it?
Over my dead body.
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