The new romantic comedy with Kate Hudson, A Little Bit of Heaven, opened in Europe several months ago to unanimously scathing reviews.  After wading through as many as I could, my first thought was, surely it can’t be that bad?  I’ve now seen it.  It really is.

Hudson plays Marley Corbett, a basically happy-go-lucky young woman who likes to party, until she is told she has terminal cancer – not the strongest of beginnings for a film described as a romantic comedy.  Marley takes the news surprisingly well; so well, in fact, that she dates the young doctor who gave her the bad news.

There’s not a great deal more to say about A Little Bit of Heaven that the synopsis above doesn’t cover, except to ask who really thought this was a good idea for a film?

Kate Hudson, a likable personality, certainly, has never been better than she was in Almost Famous, and that was twelve years ago.  Most of her career choices since have resulted with some less than satisfactory films; the exception being the underrated horror thriller, The Skeleton Key, which no one else seems to remember.  A Little Bit of Heaven won’t help her.

Part of the problem is the ensemble of uninteresting characters that populate the story.  Everyone around her brings nothing to the table, though that’s not altogether the fault of good performers such as Kathy Bates, Treat Williams, or Peter Dinklage.  First time writer Gren Wells gives no one anything of interest to do or say.  For a comedy it’s not funny, there are no fresh insights or observations to be had on the subject of cancer, and the scenes involving God, who here appears to Marley in the shape of Whoopi Goldberg, are just odd. 

I have to believe that the end result is not what director Nicole Kassell originally intended.  The chemistry between Hudson and Gael Garcia Bernal as the doctor is absent, and the intentionally fresh and breezy rom-com approach to the subject actually works against it.  Last year’s far more grounded 50/50 with Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a much better job with a somewhat similar theme, and that was without the bizarre image of Whoopi Goldberg floating high atop a cloud. 

 MPAA Rating:  R      Length:  100 minutes     Overall rating:  2 (out of 10)