At first, A Little Bit of Heaven, the latest from professional acting slacker and newly knocked up Kate Hudson, seems as uninspired and by the numbers as her previous offerings (Bride Wars, Fool’s Gold, My Best Friend’s Girl etc.). Hudson plays Marley Corbett, the kind of “emancipated†woman who has a ton of casual sex, eschews feelings, and gets big promotions by convincing condom executives that they ought to be selling directly to women. So, you know, exactly the kind of woman who is waiting for a sweet guy to set her straight and give her a life full of heartfelt sex, lots of feelings, and no condoms. But just as the guy appears — the pint-size Gael Garcia Bernal, playing Marley’s OBGYN — A Little Bit of Heaven reveals it is not content to rehash these same old rom-com cliches. No, it needs more. It needs cancer movie clichés, too. That’s right, Marley has cancer. (Look what happens when you use your vagina too much!) So now she and Bernal falling in love, via montage, with no observable chemistry, is supposed to be touching and meaningful. Not so much. One highlight: Whoopi Goldberg, who, according to IMDb, is playing “God,†is seen conversing with Hudson’s character while both wear white. This is a good sign that some of this film will take place in heaven (or, the foyer to heaven, where people in movies look down on the people they may be leaving behind), giving it a whole third genre of clichés to mine, and, as befits a project of such subtlety, making the title entirely literal.
