Shared Darkness

A languid, thinly sketched and habitually unfunny supernatural love-triangle comedy that never scratches beyond the surface of its conceit, Over Her Dead Body must have gotten its initial greenlight during the headlong dash toward pre-strike (over-)production. Nevertheless, the movie works neither in the vein of an exaggerated, farcical romantic rivalry, a la Death Becomes Her, or a more traditional romantic comedy, like recent fellow chick flick 27 Dresses. No, instead Over Her Dead Body just stinks, in painful, yawning fashion, and quickly wears out its welcome, in both this world and the next.



Telling the story of a pleasant guy, the psychic who falls for him and the former’s vengeful, deceased fiancé trying to keep them apart, the movie opens with ill-fated nuptials, then flashes forward a year, after the tightly wound bride, Kate (Eva Longoria Parker), of veterinarian Henry (Paul Rudd) is crushed by a falling ice sculpture. Henry’s well-meaning younger sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane), who just wants to restore some easygoing normalcy to her mopey brother’s life, sets him up for a reading with Ashley (Lake Bell), a psychic who also runs a catering company with her gay best friend, Dan (Jason Biggs).

Chloe eventually steals the late Kate’s diary and gives it to Ashley, so she can use the private information to pretend to communicate with Kate’s ghost, and thus “release” Henry from obligation. As Ashley begins to slowly fall for Henry, though, and vice versa, a disgruntled Kate reveals herself, and stakes a possessive claim on her former fiancé. Gamesmanship ensues, as Ashley — the only one who can see and hear Kate — alternately fights for and considers ceding Henry to the spectre of his vengeful ex.

The directorial debut of Jeff Lowell, an episodic television writer who also penned 2006’s John Tucker Must Die, Over Her Dead Body is a movie of phony raucousness. Owing to the small screen roots of its creator, the tone veers wildly from scene to scene; comedy writ large and obvious (hapless Dan creating a mess in the kitchen in slapstick fashion, Kate making sounds of mock-flatulence that she believes Ashley will mistake for Henry) rules the day. Absent a laugh-track, though, the staleness of these gags reveals itself.

Dialogue is wooden and on-the-nose, and the film’s staging is frequently awkward, from the opening scene of Chloe and Henry’s introduction to Ashley (in which Dan implausibly remains in the kitchen, in order to lamely conceal his identity for a joke later in the film) to a hallway-set scene involving the important revelation of Kate’s diary. The “combative spat” portion of the conceit — potentially the richest comedic terrain — is also hazily defined, with Longoria Parker’s Kate not very well integrated into the movie as a whole. She comes and goes, haphazardly. Additionally, there’s no soft side to Kate to make us see she and Henry as a legitimate couple in the first place.

Meager points go to Lowell and the film’s makers for rounding up capable comedic actors (Sloane, Stephen Root, et al) for some of the movie’s bit supporting parts, but the script consistently lets them down. It takes ill-conceived, cardboard-thin stereotypes and somehow makes them worse. Even a big story reversal at the end of the second act fails to give the film any punch. Because nothing about the characters or any of their relationships is in the least way believable, even in any world of heightened affect, the ludicrous twist falls painfully flat.

Longoria Parker trades on the broadly conveyed arch indignation that serves her well on the small screen, but otherwise brings nothing new to her character; Rudd, on the other hand — so good when given a good dance partner, as in something like I Could Never Be Your Woman — is left to define Henry solely through sardonic parrying. That brings us to Bell, who plays best friend to Cameron Diaz in the forthcoming What Happens in Vegas; here she displays affability and an admirable willingness to indulge in pratfall hijinks, but there’s absolutely no palpable romantic chemistry with Rudd, and her canted, slightly off-center interpretation seems more ideally suited to secondary lead roles.

In a seeming nod-of-the-head concession to its theatrical commercial washout and critical lambasting earlier this winter, Over Her Dead Body comes to DVD with no supplemental extras, save the requisite gallery of trailers. Nevertheless, to purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. Housed in a regular Amaray case, it offers up clean transfers of both 2.35:1 widescreen and 1.33:1 full screen versions of the film, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and stereo surround sound audio tracks, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. D- (Movie) D (Disc)

Two Academy Award nominated animated adventures are available together with The Classic Caballeros Collection, which packages together a pair of 1940s Disney curios, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, on one DVD.

Blending animated and live-action footage, and preceded by a card which announces Disney’s “sincere appreciation for the courtesy and cooperation of artists, musicians and friends in Latin America,” Saludos Amigos is a sort of pre-chewed cultural investigatory piece, in which Disney artisans embark on thrilling adventures to Mexico and South America with Goofy, Donald Duck and Walt Disney himself. After showcasing some 16mm footage captured in narrated, newsreel-type fashion (“Lake Titicaca is eight thousand square miles of water, two miles above sea level…”), the roughly hour-long title segues into a quartet of whimsically animated escapades which span from the Bolivian Andes to the Argentine pampas, and find Donald and little airplane Pedro exploring the countries and customs of the area. The movie earned three Academy Award nominations in 1943, including Best Musical Score, Best Sound and Best Original Song.

It also a spawned a sequel of sorts, the slightly longer The Three Caballeros. After he watches a lengthy filmstrip about a penguin, Pablo, who longs for tropical shores (part of the inspiration for Surf’s Up, it seems), Donald teams up with talkative, energetic parrot José (or Joe, to Donald) Carioca, and takes a fantastic journey through these colorful lands. Full of lighthearted dance and lively music, The Three Caballeros in particular set the stage for future live action/animation blends. This interplay, and the animation in general, is hardly dazzling by modern standards — though there are some nice touches, like Donald’s hat ducking into the light of a projector — but it nonetheless does hold up fairly well. It’s easy to see how and why audiences of its time were wowed by the material — as much for its blend of affable, kid-friendly song and dance as the glimpses of far-flung culture it afforded them.

Overall, The Classic Caballeros Collection is a curious thing, which its supplemental features serve to highlight. Professionally packaged in a regular Amray case with snap-shut hinges, and stored in turn in a glossy cardboard slipcover, The Classic Caballeros Collection comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track in English, French and Spanish, and optional subtitles for each language. DVD bonus features are anchored by a 33-minute newsreel featurette, “South of the Border with Disney,” that includes footage of Brazil’s September 7 Independence Day parade, and much more. There are also two bonus cartoon shorts starring Donald Duck, “Don Donald” and “Contrary Condor,” each running eight minutes. It’s an old, one-minute-40-second CBS interview with Disney himself, however, that provides the most illuminating back story on this material. He talks about being asked by the government to embark on a goodwill tour of “the ABC countries” (that would be Argentina, Brazil and Chile), and initially declining. When pressed, however, he said he could do some movies, and despite Disney’s statement to the contrary, one has to assume these short films are, to a certain extent, federally underwritten peeks into the cultural ruminations of countries with whom we had complicated, if quasi-friendly, relationships. Interesting, the power and reach of capitalism, entertainment and, more specifically, “the Mouse House.” To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)