‘Just Like Heaven’ a cute but average comedy

In theaters

JUST LIKE HEAVEN, directed by Mark Waters, written by Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon, based on the novel “If Only it Were True” by Marc Levy, 101 minutes, rated PG-13.

Just like something that could only come out of Hollywood. Here, as the indefatigable Elizabeth, a single San Francisco ER doctor whose car slams into a truck, Reese Witherspoon is a lively, bickering spirit who has the ability to look cute while walking through walls and sitting in refrigerators, where her head, shoulders and torso are neatly severed by shelves.

As David, Mark Ruffalo makes for an attractive drunk with no spirit who has given up on life after the death of his wife. Together, he and Elizabeth collide and find that they have issues, a good deal of which involve living space.

He has subletted her apartment, which she demands back. Trouble is, all signs point to Elizabeth being dead, which gets to the film’s other issue.

She either really is a goner and thus David is dealing with a ghost haunting his apartment – cue the exorcism, cue the occult dude (Jon Heder) with the offbeat insights into the afterlife – or her presence is the direct result of his grief compounded by too much drink.

Either way you cut it, it can only cut one way – “Just Like Heaven” is a big-budget romantic comedy, which means that it won’t exactly take audiences with supernatural powers to figure out how it will turn out.

Since you know going into it that there is nothing here that will derail these two from a celestial path of love and the tugs of the heart that tend to accompany it (“Ghost” anyone?), it’s up to director Mark Waters (“Freaky Friday,” “Mean Girls”) and his charismatic leads to make this wispy journey to heaven feel like just that.

On some levels, they do. As written by Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon from Marc Levy’s novel, “If Only It Were True,” “Just Like Heaven” is especially good in its early goings, with Witherspoon recalling the self-centered pluck of her younger days, and Ruffalo game as her watery co-star.

Their interactions are nicely served by Bruce Green’s editing, who understands the comedic effect of the quick cut. Also good is Donal Logue as David’s friend, Jack, whose reply to David when he learns that David is seeing someone “who isn’t there,” is the film’s dialogue at its best: “You mean she’s emotionally unavailable?”

You could say that. You could also say that by the time this trip to heaven detours into its hive of complications, it derails itself with revelations that come uncomfortably close to a recent media sensation. Just what that is won’t be revealed here, but when it hits, it brings this little slice of heaven crashing back to Earth.

Grade: C+

On video and DVD

THE LONGEST YARD, directed by Peter Segal, written by Sheldon Turner, 109 minutes, rated PG-13.

Nothing in the prison football comedy “The Longest Yard” is as interesting as what has become of Burt Reynolds’ face.

It’s something of a shock, this face of his, which appears to have been stretched thin in ways that might have leaned toward youth if it hadn’t taken such an obvious dip into the “House of Wax.” Just try to look away from it.

If you can, you’ll find a remake of the 1974 Reynolds hit of the same name, with Adam Sandler in the role Reynolds played before him. Here, Sandler is Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, a ruined quarterback for the NFL who once threw a game and who now is incarcerated after leading police on a high-speed chase that ends in wreckage.

Sent to a Texas prison, where the testosterone level is so high that visiting women run the risk of becoming baritones after one conjugal visit, Paul is recruited by the sadistic warden (James Cromwell) to form a football team composed of inmates. His job is to train them and then to pit them against the guards in a game aired on national television.

Will he sell out again and throw the game? Viewing the original film isn’t exactly necessary if you want to know the answer.

Laced with crude racial stereotypes that do the black community no favors and a rash of homophobia that’s akin to a minstrel show, “The Longest Yard” makes Sandler’s other football film, “The Waterboy,” look like an oasis in comparison.

For those who remember Reynolds in the original, Sandler’s casting will raise its share of eyebrows. Are we really meant to believe this man was a star quarterback? Please. Not even on his best day.

Here, he’s a straight man to Chris Rock’s Caretaker, whose job is to deliver clever asides, which he does like the good sidekick he is. Rock is so sharp, he lifts the film in the process. A better movie would have broken ranks, switched it up, and featured Rock in the lead. A recommended movie would have axed Sandler and given an expanded role to Cloris Leachman as Lynette, the warden’s saucy secretary, whose hair is piled as high as her sex drive and whose go-for-broke performance is the best part of the show.

Grade: C

Visit WeekinRewind.com, the new archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.