Over Her Dead Body review

Eva Longoria Parker Stars as a “Dead Body”

By Skip Sheffield
STAFF WRITER

It’s no “Blithe Spirit,” but “Over Her Dead Body” is a reasonably amusing vehicle for the big-screen starring debut of Eva Longoria Parker, the sexy vixen from “Desperate Housewives.”

Eva is Kate, a controlling, obsessive but beautiful woman engaged to Henry (Paul Rudd), a laid-back veterinarian.
The story begins Kate’s feverish preparations for her wedding day. Midst ordering people about, there is an accident involving a carved ice angel, and the bride-to-be is killed.

Flash forward one year and Henry is still mourning the loss of Kate. His concerned sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) talks him into visiting a psychic named Ashley (Lake Bell) in order to contact Kate’s spirit and get her permission to get on with his life.

Ashley isn’t much of a psychic, but Chloe gives big help by giving her Kate’s diary for insider information.

Not only does Ashley convince Henry she has contacted Kate in the spirit world, Kate comes back to haunt her when Ashley begins to fall for Henry. In a parallel plot, Ashley’s erstwhile gay partner in her catering company, Dan (Jason Biggs), reveals that he is hetero after all, and has a thing for his boss.

There you have it. Writer-director Jeff Lowell was clearly inspired by Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy “Blithe Spirit,” but he does not have Coward’s gift for glib, ironic gab.

Eva Longoria Parker is so eager to promote “Dead Body” she has made a number of stops around the country, dazzling local media with her doll-like beauty.

One of those stops was Miami. Lo and behold she granted a one-on-one interview to the Boca Raton News and this writer.

Looking every bit as beautiful as she does on television and on the big screen, the interview began with Eva asking where the interviewer was from.

I told her Boca Raton, and asked if she had ever heard of it.

“Why of course,” she replied. “I almost went to FAU. I was looking at colleges and it seemed perfect for me, but then I got a cheerleading scholarship to Texas A&M.”

Who knew? FAU’s Owls nearly got Eva Longoria on the cheerleading squad.

At brief, assembly-line interviews such as this there are inevitable ground rules: no questions about Eva’s personal or romantic life.

The burning question from the ladies in the office was, is Eva preggers?

A gentleman never asks a lady about such matters, but I can say there is no tangible evidence Eva is pregnant, and in fact she has a clause in her “Desperate Housewives” contract that she not get pregnant within the next 12 months.
That settled, I asked if she had heard of “Blithe Spirit.”

No, she said. I gave her a quick synopsis of how a British blue-blood is haunted by the spirit of his dead wife, who tries her best to disrupt his second marriage.

“Oh that’s different,” she said. “In my film we never get married.”

It comes as no surprise that Eva enjoyed working with writer-director Jeff Lowell and co-star Paul Rudd (“a guy’s guy), though they shared precious few scenes together. She said just looking at Jason Biggs makes her laugh.

My allotted 10 minutes was up. I asked one last question: how many of these interviews do you do a day?
“In L.A. I did 82,” she revealed.

Now that’s impressive.