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'Just Like Heaven' is lifted by its stars

Just like you might expect, the cuddly, often funny romantic comedy "Just Like Heaven" sticks its head permanently in the clouds. The film starts high up in the air in a misty, pillowy dream and, like "Ghost," steers clear of reality.

It's an easygoing boy-meets-girl saga with two likable, dependable stars — a good Reese Witherspoon and a better Mark Ruffalo. The film has a lot of oddball charm, including a headstrong specter (did we already mention the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore Oscar-winner?). It's love as manifest destiny, from a script that dots each "i" with an itty-bitty heart.

DreamWorks SKG 'Just Like Heaven' B- The verdict: Just like Hollywood hokum — but saved by its two likable, talented co-stars. Director: Mark S. Waters Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Donal Logue, Dina Waters, Ben Shenkman Run time: 95 minutes Release date: September 16, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Just Like Heaven"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

In other words, it's the kind of treacly entertainment that might make you throw up in your mouth. But only a little.

Witherspoon and Ruffalo save this movie. They've embodied characters that play to their onscreen strengths. As the workaholic doctor, Elizabeth, she's as smart, prickly and downright cute as in her breakthrough film, "Election." He's all hangdog and emotionally blue, an architect named David who's despondent over losing his wife and as pained here as in his own breakthrough film, "You Can Count on Me."

Theirs is a predictable movie — you know they'll connect and you can spot each plot twist a mile away — but one many moviegoers will embrace. At a recent preview, before the end credits I swear there were at least seven sighs echoing from the mostly female audience.

Witherspoon's doc is working too hard at her job to find love. She tackles two computer keyboards at once. One hospital staffer puts it quite bluntly: "You're so lucky. All you have to worry about is work."

Kidless, Elizabeth doesn't have her sister's worries either. "Who put SpongeBob in the pasta?" is what sis Abby (Dina Waters) shouts to her noisy small daughters as she invites the doc over to meet someone for dinner. It's a blind date.

Only, the date never happens. The doc's sleepy from work and there's this car crash.

Cut to Ruffalo's David, apartment hunting without much luck. Not until a persistent wind keeps blowing a small blue apartment ad into his face.

It's a perfect apartment — neatly furnished with a knockout 360-degree view of San Francisco (who ever said this film was realistic?). Only problem is, he ends up having to share the flat with Elizabeth, or at least her cranky spirit.

What could have been typically unbearable Hollywood hogwash becomes mostly a watchable charmer, in part because of director Mark Waters, who made the venerable "The House of Yes" and the serviceable "Mean Girls."

His film is a fairy tale and he meshes it with a mixture of familiar, easygoing songs ("Just My Imagination" and the "Ghostbusters" theme) and biting humor, including a slap at "The Exorcist."

What doesn't work is a lot of the material written for the supporting cast.

As David's friend Jack, Donal Logue seems underused. And Jon Heder (so dynamite in the title role of "Napoleon Dynamite") is saddled not only with his normally shaggy straight hair but single-word lines like "Righteous!" and "Dude!" His mostly ineffective performance as a psychic bookstore staffer suggests he may be just a one-trick actor.

But Witherspoon and Ruffalo take hackneyed Hollywood material and, with willpower and finesse, make it intimate, amusing and fetching.

Dare we say it? Their otherworldly story is almost believable. They lift "Just Like Heaven" closer to the clouds than it has any right to go.