Fatal distraction

>> Eva Longoria Parker is unlikeable
and annoying in the supernatural
rom-com Over Her Dead Body

by MALCOLM FRASER

For those who’ve regretted the dearth of movies fusing romance and the supernatural since Ghost, you’re in luck. Over Her Dead Body stars Desperate Housewives’ Eva Longoria Parker as Kate, a neurotic control freak who dies in an accident on her wedding day. A year later, her widower Henry (Paul Rudd) gets convinced by his sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) to visit Ashley (Lake Bell), a flaky part-time psychic, in the hopes of making contact. Rudd is skeptical, but Sloane talks him into it, hoping he’ll make peace with his wife’s death and move on. But when he starts dating Bell, Longoria makes a dramatic return from the hereafter to cause havoc.

Screenwriter and first-time director Jeff Lowell, who previously penned the vaguely amiable teen comedy John Tucker Must Die, has an uncertain hand with the material. It’s less than totally predictable, and has some strong characters and the odd interesting idea, so you could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s trying to subvert the rom-com formula, but if so it’s not quite a successful experiment.

The gags aren’t good for much more than the occasional chuckle, and the pacing feels off. Luckily, it’s all made tolerable by the romantic leads—the always dependable Rudd, and newcomer Bell, who has a naturalistic charm and a knack for physical comedy.

American Pie’s Jason Biggs also appears as Bell’s gay best friend, a role that’s eye-rollingly stereotypical, then takes a bizarre and unnecessary turn towards the end. But the main problem with the film is Longoria Parker. She’s certainly easy on the eyes, and last year’s bleak drama Harsh Times showed that she has some real acting chops. But here, from the first moment she appears onscreen berating a hapless wedding caterer, her character is wholly unlikeable and gratingly annoying. She’s nominally the star, but her role is more of a recurring cameo, and the film would have been vastly improved if all her scenes had been cut.

But ultimately, the blame for the whole mess must be laid on Lowell; if her character had been better written or more developed, it wouldn’t be so painful to sit through her scenes.

Over Her Dead Body opens
this Friday, Feb. 1

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