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Clunky Romance Is Dead On Arrival

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By DAVID GERMAIN, The Associated Press

Published: January 31, 2008

There's life after death for Eva Longoria Parker in "Over Her Dead Body," her first big-screen movie as the top-billed star.

There may not be much life after "Desperate Housewives" for her, though, if all she does is slight variations of the prissy, fidgety, high-and-mighty narcissist she plays on the show.

If Longoria Parker's "Housewives" character Gabrielle were killed and came back to haunt the living, she'd be pretty much the same meddlesome, manipulative, gabby spirit the actress plays in "Over Her Dead Body."

With his filmmaking debut, writer-director Jeff Lowell (whose screenplay credits include "John Tucker Must Die") adds nothing to a venerable line of afterlife comedies such as "Blithe Spirit," "Topper," "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" and its remake, "Heaven Can Wait."

Lowell and his uninspired cast, including the usually sharp and waggish Paul Rudd, deliver a movie that barely has a pulse and manages only a couple of mild laughs over the course of an hour and a half.

Weirdly, Lowell barely lets moviegoers settle into their seats before he snuffs Longoria Parker's Kate, a control freak causing exasperation among the staff scurrying about on last-minute preparations for her wedding later that day to Henry (Rudd), a veterinarian.

Kate talks at people and through them with the same haughty self-absorption of Gabrielle on "Housewives." But we never get a chance to either like or hate Kate - or even know the slightest thing about her, other than that some nice, laid-back guy wants to marry her despite her shrillness.

A couple of minutes into the movie, she's exterminated in a bizarre ice-sculpture accident, followed by an introduction to the Great Beyond that's abrupt and vague, followed by an introduction to the other dull main players.

Ashley (Lake Bell) is a slightly ditzy, slightly effective psychic who also runs a catering business with her clumsy gay friend Dan (Jason Biggs). A year after Kate's death, we're told that Henry's moping around his apartment, so his sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) drags him to a session with Ashley, hoping his dead fiance will check in from the hereafter and tell him it's OK to get on with his life.

After some terribly contrived machinations between Ashley and Chloe, Kate really does start appearing, aiming to shatter the budding romance between her ex-betrothed and the flaky psychic.

Only Ashley can see and hear Kate, setting up a string of dreary sight gags as the two spar (you'd think their duels might be more interesting than the usual cat fights, given that one of the cats is road kill, but no such luck).

Everything about the movie is as clunky and unimaginative as the title, which itself was arrived at after the filmmakers considered such windy alternatives as "How I Met My Boyfriend's Dead Fiancee."

Longoria Parker may be the dead fiancee, but everyone involved is a stiff.

MOVIE REVIEW

Over Her Dead Body *½

MOVIE BOARD RATING: PG-13 (sexual content and profanity)

STARS: Eva Longoria Parker, Paul Rudd, Lake Bell, Jason Biggs

DIRECTOR: Jeff Lowell

LOCATION: See movie times, Page 8, for local showtimes.

PLOT SUMMARY: A jealous ghost tries to scare off her fiance's new girlfriend.

RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes

ON THE WEB: overherdead

bodymovie.com

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