Can someone explain to me the appeal of Eva Longoria again? I'm not a Desperate Housewives watcher (although Go Felicity Huffman!), but I recognize that she is likely considered the "hottest one," although my money's on Marcia Cross after she was drawn back into acting after getting a Masters Degree in psychology. Smart women are hot, you know. Anyway, It could just be this film, but Longoria utterly lacks anything resembling charisma or even likability in her performance as a bitchy ghost in Over Her Dead Body.
Oh, I'm sorry, it's Eva Longoria Parker now. Look, famous people, just keep the name you got famous with, okay? Save any name-taking you want to do when you get married for the legal stuff and for kids' names and what-have-you. Shoving your odds-ain't-that-good-anyway marriage into your professional moniker is either a "yay I'm married!" move, a "look what a good wife I am even though I'm more famous than my husband" angle or you're catering to your jerkwad husband's ego that will blow up in three years over something else and tabloids will be interested in you again. Seriously, I do not want to wind up having to type Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Shyamalan on the off-chance that hookup happens, so let's get the precedent locked down, all right?
So, here's the cute premise of this movie. Normally, ghosts are ethereal, angelic and they want their loved ones to move on with their lives. In this one, Kate (Longoria) is an uppity jerk trying to make sure her grieving almost-husband Henry (Paul Rudd) doesn't hook up with the hot psychic/caterer Ashley (Lake Bell), who incidentally was urged by Henry's sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) to lie to Henry and get him over Kate's death.
So the potential was there to be mildly cute and slightly different, but it turns out to be pretty haphazard and cobbled together. Comedy opportunities come and go with flat results, chemistry seems artificial and most of the actors are better than this material and can't do much with it. Rudd is his usual affable self here as he slums for a house payment, and the film's funniest bits tend to come when it's relatively apparent that he's improvising and rambling. Lake Bell is fairly captivating but uneven, since her character has to have giant moron moments in order for the ghostly "hijinks" (or perhaps "lojinks") to actually work on her. Jason Biggs as Ashley's gay best friend, well... he CAN do something besides pathetic dork, can't he? Somehow, Stephen Root is in this movie, too, without much to do but remind us of better comedies.
It's really Longoria who sucks the life out of every scene when she shows up and reminds us that the movie is a gimmick. She's barely on screen with Rudd at all, but I still never bought that they ever liked each other, even when she's staring forlornly at his sadness. She just doesn't seem to bring anything to the table, and the spread is already pretty lean in the first place.
There are some cute bits here and there, but overall, I'd wait for everybody involved to come by in better vehicles before hopping in the back of this jalopy.
