2008 Woodie Awards
Vote Absentee
"Over Her Dead Body" is lifeless
By: Brad Canze
Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: News
"Over Her Dead Body" is not a movie worth getting excited over.
And if their performances are any indication, the actors in the movie agree.
The movie revolves around Henry (Paul Rudd), a veterenarian whose fiancee Kate (Eva Longoria-Parker) is killed on their wedding day. Henry's sister sends him to a psychic, Ashley (Lake Bell), who tells him that Kate wants him to move on.
As Henry moves on and inevitably begins dating Ashley, Kate's jealous and catty ghost begins haunting her fiance's new girlfriend. Supposedly this would be where the humor in the film comes from.
The actors seem to be aware of what a uninspired and predictable film they are appearing in. Most of the actors display a complete lack of enthusiasm throughout the movie. Rudd's face does not emote throughout the entire movie, some of which can be attributed to his dry delivery of jokes, but mostly he just appears to not care.
Longoria-Parker has the opposite problem of being too loud and in the audience's face. As a ghost pestering a rival woman, she should be annoying, but amusingly so. Instead, the audience spends this entire movie just hoping that she will go away.
For what is supposed to be a romantic comedy, there are few good jokes here. Rudd gets in a few decent deadpans, but anything that's supposed to be funny between Kate and Ashley falls flat.
The idea of a jealous dead fiancee haunting her rightful husband's girlfriend is played with, but never fleshed out as much as it could have been. Instead of using their dynamic to really get inside the characters and play off one another, the haunting only really extends to fart jokes and long-winded stories about Kate's childhood pets.
Jason Biggs is in here as well, as the same pratfall-prone doofus he's been playing since "American Pie" nine years ago, except this time he's supposed to be gay, too. Biggs fails in selling himself in this role, and in delivering decent physical humor.
"Over Her Dead Body" is not an atrocious movie. It is not awful in any respect, but neither is it anywhere near good. The movie works tolerably as mindless entertainment, but anybody hoping for more than that will be disappointed.
Two out of five stars
And if their performances are any indication, the actors in the movie agree.
The movie revolves around Henry (Paul Rudd), a veterenarian whose fiancee Kate (Eva Longoria-Parker) is killed on their wedding day. Henry's sister sends him to a psychic, Ashley (Lake Bell), who tells him that Kate wants him to move on.
As Henry moves on and inevitably begins dating Ashley, Kate's jealous and catty ghost begins haunting her fiance's new girlfriend. Supposedly this would be where the humor in the film comes from.
The actors seem to be aware of what a uninspired and predictable film they are appearing in. Most of the actors display a complete lack of enthusiasm throughout the movie. Rudd's face does not emote throughout the entire movie, some of which can be attributed to his dry delivery of jokes, but mostly he just appears to not care.
Longoria-Parker has the opposite problem of being too loud and in the audience's face. As a ghost pestering a rival woman, she should be annoying, but amusingly so. Instead, the audience spends this entire movie just hoping that she will go away.
For what is supposed to be a romantic comedy, there are few good jokes here. Rudd gets in a few decent deadpans, but anything that's supposed to be funny between Kate and Ashley falls flat.
The idea of a jealous dead fiancee haunting her rightful husband's girlfriend is played with, but never fleshed out as much as it could have been. Instead of using their dynamic to really get inside the characters and play off one another, the haunting only really extends to fart jokes and long-winded stories about Kate's childhood pets.
Jason Biggs is in here as well, as the same pratfall-prone doofus he's been playing since "American Pie" nine years ago, except this time he's supposed to be gay, too. Biggs fails in selling himself in this role, and in delivering decent physical humor.
"Over Her Dead Body" is not an atrocious movie. It is not awful in any respect, but neither is it anywhere near good. The movie works tolerably as mindless entertainment, but anybody hoping for more than that will be disappointed.
Two out of five stars
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