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'Just Like Heaven': Sweetly and surprisingly uplifting

Remember City of Angels, that classic of metaphysically crossed lovers, where glum, black-clad angel Nicolas Cage falls in love with Kewpie doll-cute human doc Meg Ryan, but can't be with her until he gives up his immortality?

And remember the sweet emotional payoff when the angel decides to trade in those heavenly wings for the wings of love, so to speak, and how it's gonna be so great because they're gonna grow old together ... until Meg gets flattened by a truck?

DreamWorks SKG 'Just Like Heaven' The verdict: Just like a sweet romantic comedy should be. 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

I know that the whole point was to show the beauty of sacrifice and how you'd give anything, even eternal life and the ability to fly, to have just one teensy-weensy second of love in your life. Whatever. I just felt fantastically cheated, having sat through that whole stupid movie, just to get punched in the proverbial gut with all these life lessons and whatnot.

All I really wanted was a little happiness, and maybe for Nic Cage to take off that depressing long black coat, because he was freaking me out.

Repeat after me: Meryl Streep movies are for lessons. Meg Ryan movies are for shmoopiness. Geez.

I won't be the Grinch Who Stole Your Movie Ending and tell you exactly what befalls the similarly challenged couple in the light and sweet Just Like Heaven, about a live guy (Mark Ruffalo), a seemingly dead woman (Reese Witherspoon) and the wacky hijinks that befall them on the rocky road to love and, in the woman's case, breathing.

I'll just say that the film's life lessons are mostly of the "learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all" and "don't mess with destiny" variety, rather than the "Meg Ryan road pancake" kind.

Most romantic comedies take place in an alternate reality where everybody's attractive, publishing interns and fledgling actors can afford huge lofts in New York, and interrupting someone's wedding to declare your love ends in a kiss with everybody standing up and clapping, rather than a punch in the face and some sort of restraining order.

Just Like Heaven is blissfully aware of its unreality — overworked doctor Elizabeth (Witherspoon) is too busy to date or comb her hair, but has time to decorate her apartment like an Elle Decor cover, for instance. This breeziness leaves the movie free to then ride the Unreality Train into romantic comic gold — and to even touch on some real, raw emotional issues like the proper length of the grieving process and whether you can really work yourself into spinsterhood. (I have family members who just read that last sentence, written by 34-year-old single me, and are tripping over themselves to call and give me their answer. I'm not home.)

We meet Elizabeth at the end of a nearly 24-hour shift at a San Francisco hospital, where she's aware of how good a doctor she is, and how she has no life outside of work. Like a lot of young professionals, she believes that once she gets established, she'll find time for love. In fact, she's on her way to meet a guy that her married, mommied sister Abby (Dina Spybey) is fixing her up with, when she's ... hit by a truck.

Wait! I know I said there were no Ingenue Pancakes here, and I'm not a dirty filthy liar, because while Meg and Nic's love story ends when Mr. Truck comes along, Just Like Heaven's love story begins there. Elizabeth finds herself wandering around her perfect apartment in the clothes she was last wearing, while a beer-guzzling widower named David (Ruffalo) has apparently moved in. This is curious to Elizabeth, who has no memory of having ever moved out.

Actually, she has very little memory of anything, other than that she lives there and that it's weird that she can suddenly stand in the middle of her dining room table and float into the fridge. David, who's been told only that something tragic happened to the previous tenant, decides to investigate how Elizabeth wound up pulling a Patrick Swayze-in-Ghost number in his new apartment.

With the help of a goofy medium (Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder), his psychiatrist best friend (the always funny Donal Logue) and Elizabeth's increasing memories, she and David try to piece together what happened to her and, perhaps, how to fix it. (There's a twist here but you're not getting it out of me, man.)

The message, of course, is obvious: Elizabeth, so busy in life she can't find a good guy until she's dead, and David, so focused on his loss, can't move on until he finds this half-dead, half-alive woman to hold onto. In another movie, this might be creepy or depressing, but with such likable, talented leads, Just Like Heaven becomes a sad, sweetly uplifting and surprisingly moving little wisp of a film.

And while it's not all that deep, it made me feel better. If I want to be deep, I'll rent City of Angels. Or not.

The Flick Chick's Bottom Line: Just Like Heaven is just like a sweet romantic comedy should be.