September 26, 2005, 12:00 p.m.
Heaven Sent
A life-loving box-office winner.

Dealing with the end of life may just be the hardest topic to talk about, even with those closest to you; never mind tackling the issue as a subject of political debate.

We saw the keep-it-away-from-the-dinner-table-and-the-talking-heads-show aspects of the general issue when the nation watched Terri Schindler Schiavo’s parents struggle to keep their daughter going, against the wishes of her by-then-pretty-much-estranged husband earlier this year. And so many of us know all too intimately and painfully what watching and waiting and deciding — God help you if you're there — is like.

That heavy reality makes it a bit remarkable that the recently released comedy Just Like Heaven would go there, that an A-List actress like Reese Witherspoon would bother getting her name attached to such a movie, and that lesser-knowns like Mark Ruffalo would take a chance with their careers by being associated with the movie’s somewhat counter-cultural, even pro-life, message.

A warning: If you keep reading, the plot will be spoiled — but the revelation is necessary for the sake of giving all involved the proper cultural kudos.

I should confess that I’m a sucker for silly comedies anyway — which is, at heart, what Just Like Heaven is. Throw in a worthwhile message and I’m in something just like heaven. (This movie outdoes itself by adding Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder — if you're a fan of ND, you know what I mean.)

The basic plotline of Just Like Heaven is that a hard-working young doctor (Witherspoon) misses the sweetest part of life — falling in love — because she’s so busy working. In her case, she’s spending her time saving other people’s lives. On the way to a blind-date dinner at her sister’s house, the doctor, Elizabeth, gets into a car accident.

Then the movie gets a little goofy. The doctor’s spirit winds up falling for the guy, David (Ruffalo) who sublets her apartment. Assumed dead by the audience (and the guy), we’ll learn that she’s very much alive, though lying in a hospital bed in a coma and showing no real signs of improvement. Having long ago signed up for nothing-artificial final plans, the hospital makes Elizabeth's sister choose between cutting her off or letting her continue as a vegetable (as the mainstream media might put it). Elizabeth’s spirit and her new love, knowing she is still with us, fight the power of her signature as best they can. Which, as you might imagine, is more than a little odd. The message, however, isn’t.

As the struggle plays out in an argument scene in her apartment early in the movie, David yells: “You’re dead!” And Elizabeth replies, holding onto dear life: “Stop saying that!” David winds up getting it and, as fiction so often fancies it, his kiss will eventually make all the difference.

It's a bit much to say that Just Like Heaven is a “belated brief in the Terri Schiavo case." But a subtle, life-embracing message that could do us all more good than harm? That’s what I thought as the end credits rolled.

The stuff of Discovery Channel documentary? Obviously not. Realistic? Not totally. But so what? Just Like Heaven is, on the surface, a silly romantic comedy. How many of those are realistic and fact-based? Life would indeed be just like heaven if we all got the happy endings most romantic comedies tend to wrap up with. But to take a topic that is so difficult and make it funny and maybe inspire the audience to think about the preciousness of life in a fresh and loving and disarmingly light way, Just Like Heaven comes pretty close to being from somewhere just like its title suggests.

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