Box Office Movie

OVER HER DEAD BODY
Rated:PG-13Eva Longoria Parker may get top billing, but Over Her Dead Body is first and foremost a vehicle for Lake Bell, whose previous work has included recurring roles in television series like “Boston Legal.” Playing a fraudulent psychic, Bell keeps an upbeat demeanor no matter how dispiriting her surroundings. With a script like this, that requires real talent. Screenwriter Jeff Lowell, in his debut as a feature director, makes his background in television sitcoms all too obvious. Over Her Dead Body doesn’t just rehash ideas from better film romances, it dumbs them down, stripping them of wit and emotion.

As Kate, a shrewish variation on her “Desperate Housewives” role, Longoria Parker is crushed to death in the opening scene. She doesn’t reappear until well into the movie, leaving plenty of time to meet her fiancé Henry (Paul Rudd), a sad-sack veterinarian with a nagging sister, Chloe (Lindsay Sloane), and Ashley (Bell), a ditzy psychic and caterer whose “gay friend” Dan (Jason Biggs) is the butt of ineptly staged slapstick and crude sexual gags. Henry and Ashley meet cute and start falling for each other, rousing Kate from the afterlife to keep them apart.

Kate’s strategy is to humiliate Ashley by forcing her rival to run naked through a gym, demand dirty talk during sex, and repeatedly strip out of her minidresses and hot pants–what Lowell evidently believes are typical feminine ploys as well as keys to a great date movie. Unfortunately, the plotting is too haphazard to build any momentum, with characters and situations abandoned for no apparent reason. Much of the film just doesn’t make sense, even by the standards of a supernatural romance. It’s never even clear why Kate doesn’t want Henry to date. Typically, Lowell cuts away from the film’s one sex scene before anything happens. All of these problems might be overlooked if its characters weren’t so utterly forgettable.

Ghosts, especially the fun-loving kind who play practical jokes, have had a long tradition in films, one to which Longoria Parker adds next to nothing. Her Kate isn’t much different from her Gabrielle on TV, begging the question: Why buy a ticket if you can get it free at home? Rudd does little more than show up and keep a straight face, while Biggs flounders in an underwritten role. Bell is animated and appealing, but even she has trouble bringing her tired gags to life.

The extremely unflattering cinematography by John Bailey indicates that almost no one was committed to making this film a success. Over Her Dead Body will find its best audience on airplane flights, where viewers will be unable to get up and leave without parachutes.