Just Like Heaven

(2005)

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

(2005)

Holiday

(1938)

Content advisory: Just like Heaven: Sex-related talk and crude language, a crass attempted seduction, a brief, arguably profane parody of an exorcism, some heavy drinking. Mature viewing. Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Comic menace and excitement; mild rude humor of both the family-film and bawdy varieties, fleeting unflattering comic references to an Anglican cleric. Might be appropriate family viewing. Holiday: Romantic complications and semi-comic inebriation. Might be okay family viewing.

A charming romantic comedy with a distinctly pro-life bent, Mark Waters’ Just Like Heaven (new on DVD), starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, has distinct echoes of Bonnie Hunt’s 2000 charmer Return to Me. Both films are winsome romantic comedies with at least a hint of the supernatural, and both address death and loss as well as love and laughter with more wisdom than the typical date movie. Both are also chaste romances about a man and woman who fall in love without tumbling into the sack.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Just Like Heaven is its distinctly pro-life implications with respect to end-of-life issues. Here is a light comedy that — without remotely getting maudlin or morbid — dramatizes how a healthy person is in no position to sign away life-sustaining measures, incapacitated patients may be more aware of events around them than we might give them credit for, and doctors who counsel pulling the plug may not be giving family the straight facts.

Issues include a mercifully brief but still tasteless parody of a scene from The Exorcist (it’s a movie joke, not a religion joke), and some unchaste behavior from a supporting character that goes farther than necessary (nothing happens and the behavior isn’t condoned). Some may also be turned off by flaky new-age spin provided by one character, though there’s no serious statement about spirituality, as there is about end-of-life issues.

Wallace and Gromit leap from short features to their first feature film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (new on DVD). It’s a cracking success. Compared to their shorts, the comedy’s a bit broader, and there’s a sprinkling of rude humor, but the stop-motion animated duo manages to sustain their trademark loopy invention, gonzo energy and sublime silliness at feature length. As always, director Nick Park perfectly captures genre film conventions: the glistening of rain-slicked streets at night, an eerie silence abruptly interrupted by a large object unexpectedly crashing onto the hood of a car; the angry, frightened pitchfork-packing mob.

There are also strangely charming images from nowhere but Park’s own eccentric imagination, such as bunnies floating dreamily in space, suspended in the clear plastic containment tank of Wallace’s humane vacuum-powered rabbit-extractor.

Like Just Like Heaven, Were-Rabbit turns to religion only for a punchline: The town’s Anglican vicar is a goofily histrionic dolt (though this is played for silliness, not religion-bashing). Yet as a fearsome fluffy lapine monster rampages about the countryside, the film is a delight, and a welcome return for two old friends.

Why is George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, starring Cary Grant and Catherine Hepburn, so well known, while the equally unforgettable Holiday, from the same director, writers, and leads, suffers comparative neglect? Worse, why is Holiday is only now making its DVD debut — and only as part of a five-film “Cary Grant Box Set” (new this week)? It’s an outrage. Holiday deserves its own DVD. Eschewing such plot mechanics as comic misunderstandings and elaborate deceptions, Holiday relies on note-perfect dialogue and characterizations and a story that never missteps. This is one of the great ones.