Over Her Dead Body (2008) [PG-13] *

It's her wedding day, and Kate (Eva Longoria) is acting as her own wedding planner; she's obsessing about wedding and reception details and bossing around her fiance Henry (Paul Rudd), instead of basking in the glow of the romantic event. She gets into an argument with a drunken ice sculptor about his wingless ice angel, and then the wingless angel falls off the sculptor's truck, killing Kate.

Fast forward a year after her death; Henry still has not moved on with his life, so his sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) drags him to see Ashley (Lake Bell), a local psychic and caterer. Chloe convinces Ashley to use details from Kate's secret diary as a way of convincing Henry that she really is a psychic. Ashley resists, but she begins to develop romantic feelings for Henry and decides she can use all the help she can get. Then Kate shows up and she's angry that Ashley is getting involved with Henry. She decides to haunt Ashley, to drive her crazy, until Ashley agrees to stay away from Henry.

This feels like a sloppily written, comedic version ofThe Wedding Planner meets Always, complete with ghostly comedy and flatulence jokes. The acting is uniformly mediocre, with all of the leads phoning in their performances. Eva Longoria simply reprises her role as the bitchy Gabrielle Solis from Desperate Housewives; Paul Rudd and Lake Bell get no direction, and must be wondering what they are doing in this disaster; Jason Biggs as Dan, Ashley's assistant caterer, uses frenetic energy and physical comedy to give substance to a thankless supporting role. This is the first directing experience for writer Jeff Lowell. If we are fortunate, it will be his last. 

Labels: comedy, fantasy, romance
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 30/100
Tomatometer (critics=15, viewers=42)
Blu-ray