If you had asked me yesterday morning before I watched this film and the previous review, Bad Teacher, which one I would enjoy the most I would have said without hesitation Bad Teacher. As you can tell much to my surprise I actually preferred A Little Bit of Heaven, maybe it was the mood I was in or because the story is morally superior to a teacher wanting a boob job, but I laughed out loud more times than I expected.
The story here is Kate Hudson plays Marley, a happy go lucky individual not interested in relationships, just living life to what she believes is the fullest. Then after a trip to the doctor to work out why she is run down and losing weight finds out she has terminal colon cancer. It is quite brave to use this cancer as its not the normal 'chick cancer', it is an aggressive and particularly hard to catch cancer too as it is nothing you can check for lumps for, and they have Kate take the mickey out of herself for getting 'ass cancer'.
She has an outer body experience while having an endoscopy involving Whoopi Goldberg, I quite enjoyed this as its always fun to see Whoopi, and Marley's reaction to seeing her is incredibly real also as though she is meeting her for the first time. From this meeting Marley is told she is dying and is granted three wishes, one to fly, second to win a million dollars, but she cannot come up with a third and so is sent back to consciousness to work it out.
What anybody could guess from the first five minutes of this movie is that her third wish is to fall in love, that actually she wants everything she felt was mundane and not in her game plan such as the house the kids the husband. And so we have Julian, Marley's doctor and the man to bring her love before she leaves this mortal coil. I love Gael Garcia Bernal who plays Doctor Julian Goldstein (a Jewish Mexican), and before watching this film I felt he was becoming trapped in this world of Romantic Comedies having previously starred in Letters to Juliet with Amanda Seyfried. Now however I think his decision to do this film was right, he is dorky and cute, but also serious, and it opens up more roles for him in the mainstream American market. But if you want to see him at his best watch the Motorcycle Diaries.
Back to the film, the relationships between Marley and her friends are funny, sweet, and poignant, especially the pregnant friend not quite being able to deal with awaiting the birth of her second child while her best friend is dying. Lucy Punch plays Marley's artistic best friend Sarah, and she is the most robust of the friendship group when it comes to dealing with the cancer, until the very end of course, the kind of friend I'd hope to be.
To complete Marley's support group we have her parents, her Mother who comes to live with her played by the wonderful Kathy Bates, and her emotionally constipated Father Treat Williams.
This movie ticks along nicely, it has the obvious emotional ups and downs, but it doesn't try to do anything differently, except perhaps having Whoopi Goldberg as a godlike mentor for Marley, and that was why it was enjoyable. No miracle cures are discovered, Marley finds love before the end, her friends don't all cope so well with her illness, and even Peter Dinklage makes an appearance as a dwarf escort. I laughed, I cried, and what was important I think was that I didn't expect too much from the movie, and it did not expect too much from me.
A film to watch if you are in the mood for a weepy, but often laugh out loud funny, couple of hours.
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