This is after we've gotten more acclimated to seeing co-star Mark Ruffalo — who is more identified with smart movies such as You Can Count on Me or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind— looking positively mortified to be trapped in what sometimes borders on sit-com slapstick. It figures the young widower he plays would be depressed, but Ruffalo looks like a Little Leaguer who has been dragged with mom to the gynecologist. (Related story: Ruffalo ascends to the next level in Heaven)

Witherspoon is a workaholic ER doctor who lives in what must be a budget-stretching San Francisco apartment with a perfect aquatic view. Ruffalo, who doesn't seem to have much cash coming in, is able to sublet it, thanks to her extended comatose state. But this doesn't prevent Witherspoon's edgy spirit from showing up and demanding to know what he's doing there. Or to complain about the beer-can ring he has left on her coffee table.

This is an extreme variation on what screenwriters used to call "meeting cute" — and by this time, you'll know whether you want to bail. Ruffalo can see this apparition, but no one else can, and much of the comedy this hook generates is expendable.

But supernatural romance is more appealing, and a subsequent plot twist that threatens this (which is both logical and, from a storytelling point of view, clever) gets the movie onto a slightly higher plane.

Reese is buttercup-cute and has enough star power to remain likable even when her character is acting snitty. Garnering a chuckle or two, but no more, are Donal Logue from The Tao of Steve (now there's a comedy) — and, as a desperate magnet for both the slacker and "dude" demographics, Jon Heder from Napoleon Dynamite.

The director is Mark Waters, who, after delivering two consecutive movies that were better than expected (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls), has pretty well delivered just what young PG-13 girls carrying that extra pack of Kleenex will expect. In any event, better a coma than Legally Blonde 3.

A romantic comedy that hinges on matters of death, persistent coma and life support without resorting to bathos or bad taste must be doing something right. Although it often feels more earthbound than its plot line warrants and could have used a stronger dose of froth, "Just Like Heaven" benefits greatly from its likable leads, Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, whose destined-for-each-other characters make recognizably flawed rooting interests.

Adapting Marc Levy's novel "If Only It Were True," a work whose merits are of the high-concept sort rather than the literary, screenwriters Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon and director Mark Waters have made a smart, tenderhearted love story. With nods to Mrs. Muir and her ghost and touches of "Sleeping Beauty," the ultra-romantic premise mixes in modern medical dilemmas with a light hand, never forcing its points about life's random blows and the transcendent power of love.

Filling an empty boxoffice berth for romantic comedy, "Heaven" should reach reasonable heights.

Bringing her knack for playing sassy overachievers, Witherspoon here suggests a weariness creeping in around her character's crisp edges. A gifted doctor, Elizabeth spends her waking hours at the San Francisco hospital where she has just been hired as attending physician, to the bitter disappointment of competing colleague Brett (Ben Shenkman). On a rainy night, she tears herself away from her 26-hour ER shift to attend a dinner party where her sister Abby (Dina Waters), a frazzled mother, is setting her up with a nice guy. A head-on collision with a truck keeps Elizabeth from making her date.

David (Ruffalo, terrifically funny and vulnerable), the sad sack who sublets the apartment Elizabeth left behind, is more impressed with the comfortable couch than the flat's sweeping views and rooftop access. Elizabeth promptly shows up to scold him about rings on the coffee table. She disappears as mysteriously as she arrives, but she keeps returning -- and with an apartment like that, who can blame her?

For reasons that become clear to them much later, Elizabeth is visible only to David. "When I'm not with you, it's like I don't exist," she tells him -- a pithy definition of the early phase of romance. But two years into a serious low-grade depression, David must consider the very real possibility that his hallucinations of a "blond control freak" are a sign of mental illness. His party-hearty friend and shrink Jack (the excellent Donal Logue) tries in vain to cure David's melancholy by getting him back into the swing of things -- i.e., bars.

Elizabeth's appearances persist, disrupting David's quiet devotion to six-packs and that good couch. Her utter familiarity with the place (though she's incapable of touching or picking up anything in it) gets him to an occult bookshop, where a young guy with psychic gifts and spacey demeanor (Jon Heder, "Napoleon Dynamite") offers guidance and a bit of wisdom, all delivered in Orange County dude-speak that's a distracting miscalculation.

Even given the genre's poetic license, the script's internal logic isn't consistent. Elizabeth knows every nook and cranny of her apartment but can't remember who she is or what she did for a living, when in fact she spent most of her time and energy at the hospital. But mainly the plot compels -- before and after the hopeful twist that arrives halfway through -- and the comedy clicks in this tale of a love connection between disconnected souls who exist on different planes.

Witherspoon and Ruffalo's fine support includes Rosalind Chao as a colleague of Elizabeth's and Ivana Milicevic as the hot-to-trot neighbor David must fend off. Helmer Waters ("Freaky Friday," "Mean Girls") orchestrates the material with an emphasis on character, keeping FX to an admirable minimum. With the exception of a few flourishes, the cinematography and production package are straight-ahead and unfussy, which works most of the time. But the film often feels flat when it should be moody or whimsical. Full of heart, this "Heaven" could have used a bit more magic.