Crazy women and the audiences expected to love them: “Over Her Dead Body” and “Watching the Detectives”

(Well, once more I’m giving you a two-fer, since neither of these movies really have enough substance for an independent review.)

So my older brother once told me, “Stay away from crazy chicks, because you think you can fix them, but you can’t, and you just end up as nuts as they are. They’re pretty good in bed, though.” Now given the fact that this same brother cannot stand any contemporary music and wonders why bands of his youth like Journey, Foreigner, and .38 Special don’t get any respect or radio play anymore, you understand why generally take his advice was a grain of salt big enough to stick in a pasture for the delight of the cattle. Still, the myth of the crazy chick is omnipresent in our culture and it shows up in these two films.

First up is Over Her Dead Body, which rests on the myth of the “crazy bitch.” In it, Eva Longoria-Parker is said bitch, Kate, who is crushed by an ice-sculpture on her wedding day. This would seem more tragic if the movie hadn’t spent its opening establishing her as an obsessed, controlling bitchBridezilla. Fast forward a year, and her fiancé Henry (Paul Rudd) is still mourning her loss (this would seem natural, but since Kate is presented as such a bitch! the movie implicitly asks why he would be so broken up over being free of such a bitch!). To cheer him up, his flighty sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane) drags him to see a psychic/caterer to hopefully find closure with Kate’s spirit. The psychic happens to be an earthy, SoCal hottie named Ashley (Lake Bell), but Henry barely notices her. So Chloe secretly gives Ashley Kate’s diary so she can convince Henry that she’s channeling Kate. Wackiness ensues. And by wackiness, I mean, Henry and Ashley fall love.

Alas, there is a monkey in the wrench! Kate’s ghost is sent back to Earth to “wrap up loose ends.” Only then can she get into heaven. Problem is, she doesn’t know what loose ends she has to wrap up, since was such a bitch! to her guidance-counselor-angel that the angel stormed out of purgatory on her (what a bitch!). Seeing Ashley with Henry, Kate assumes that her job is to break them up, because…um…she’s just such a bitch that she doesn’t want anyone else in Henry’s life. Fortunately, Ashley is the only person who can see Kate, so Kate can better torment her.

From here the plot really ceases to be a story and just becomes a series of humorous (in intent if not necessarily execution) scenes in which Kate tries to chase Ashley away. She keeps Ashley up all night by prattling on about her pets, favorite colors, etc. She’s causes Ashley to miscalculate the amount of sherry she puts in her cherries jubilee and causes a mini-Hiroshima. She starts many public arguments with Ashley, which look to bystanders like Ashley’s shouting at herself. When she and Henry go on a romantic getaway, Kate makes farting noises and totally grosses Ashely out while she and Henry are trying to have sex. Hee hee hee…what a bitch! (sigh).

Finally, Henry finds out that Ashley had Kate’s diary and breaks up with her. Cue the “nobody’s happy” montage. Henry tries dating again, but none of them have the magic of Ashley. Ashley tries dating again too, but none of them are as sweet as Henry. Kate sees that Henry is unhappy and suddenly realizes that her mission on Earth was actually to make sure he was happy! She orchestrates an eleventh-hour reunion between Ashley and Henry and ascends into Heaven. Everyone’s happy. Except the viewer, who is probably retching by then (lord knows I was).

Okay so are we clear on the premise here? Kate’s a bitch. We good on that? Because the movie really wants us to know that. Of course she’s such a bitch! you have to wonder what Henry saw in her in the first place, but the movie never really addresses that. As a matter of fact it never really references their relationship much anyway or why Henry was so happy with her. Likewise, his scenes with Ashley, while sweet, have no real chemistry. Certainly not enough to warrant them getting married at the end of the film (whoops…er, spoiler). Apparently, it’s good enough that they’re two attractive people.

The cast is all game. Eva Longoria-Parker brings more fizz to her role as such..well, you know than it really deserves. Lake Bell is pleasant and likable (and has a refreshing set of curves—or maybe that’s just in comparison to Longoria-Parker’s line-drawing body-type). As Henry, Rudd’s usual droll sarcasm almost salvages the movie. When he comments acidly on the proceedings around him, you have to wonder if he wasn’t actually breaking character.

Watching the Detectives features a different stereotype, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. First covered in The Onion’s AV Club, the MPDG has garnered a fair amount of coverage lately, perhaps as more critics and journalists realize what a lazy construct this is: the earthy, freespirited beauty who rescues the hero from the drudgery of his life. Whereas Muriel tells Macon in The Accidental Tourist “I’m not just a bottle of something you can use up,” that is almost exactly what the MPDG is. What makes Watching the Detectives unique is that the MPDG in this movie has no real purpose other than to be completely batshit crazy.

The MPDG in question is Violet (Lucy Liu), who walks into the life—and store–of Neil (Cillian Murphy). Neil is a movie lover who runs his own genre-title video store (pardon me a moment: video store? This movie was made in 2007. Who the hell still watches VHS tapes? I had a dual-deck VHS/DVD player in 2005 and people made fun of me. Okay, continuing…), and is obsessed with noir movies. As the movie begins, he is dumped by his such a bitch! of a girlfriend, because she sees him as having no drive and being content to work in his “shitty little video store” for the rest of his life.  So, recently dumped and gunshy about life, Neil turns out to be irresistible bait for the errant MPDG.

Neil likes Violet because, well, she’s played by Lucy Liu. Violet likes Neil because he seems like a nice guy. They fall into a courtship which basically entails Violet doing sadistic things to Neil to see if he’ll come back. They include:

• Violet cajoled Neil into breaking into a competing video store and mixing up their tapes.
• Violet has two friends pretend to be detectives and interrogate Neil about the aforementioned video store break-in. One of them pretends to prepare to sodomize Neil.
• During a nice day in the park in which she meets some of Neil’s friends, Violet steals a picnic basket and passes it off as her own.
• Violet flirts overtly and shamelessly with the singer in local bar band to make Neil jealous.
• Violet tells Neil a tall tale (read: complete fabrication) about being stalked by a lunatic ex-boyfriend, causing Neil to slip into mainline paranoia for a couple days.
• Violet has a friend pretend to be said psychotic ex and has him pretend to abduct her and tie her up to see if Neil will rescue her.
• Violet tricks Neil into stealing money from her underworld place of business.
• Violet breaks up with Neil to see if he’ll miss her.

But all of this actually a clever ploy to lure Neil out of his shell and embrace a life of adventure. Because adventure and psychotic break from reality are apparently synonyms in this movie’s world. Of course, Neil’s life isn’t really that bad: he hangs out with a cadre of geeky film aficionado friends and runs his own business. But apparently, he just doesn’t have enough criminal mischief in his life.

It might be defensible if Violet was an interesting character, but she’s a one-dimensional whimsy machine. Never once do these characters have anything even resembling an intimate conversation, and never once does Violet indicate there’s anything more to her than the insanity that’s on the surface.

Watching the Detectives manages to be an even lazier movie than Over Her Dead Body. At least that film had the shadow of a plotline. WTD is just a series of scenes of Violet doing insane shit to Neil and then it ends. The movie was written and directed by Paul Soter of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe (whose humor, I must admit, is lost on me), and apparently people act this way in his world. The leads are game, but are woefully miscast. While Liu is more enjoyable in lighter roles than her Hollywood-proscribed “dragon-lady” persona, she’s too old for this kind of nonsense. She just turned 40, which is a solid decade and a half too old to be skipping around in Vans (speaking of, my bro of the salt-lick advice used to wear those totally unironically and without socks). Murphy tries to be appealing, but can’t help but exude the vibe that he wants to wear Liu’s skin like a topcoat. Dude’s creepy.

So, there we have our choices in Hollywood crazy chicks. We can order skinny-bitchy or skinny-whimsical. Lucky us.