Over Her Dead Body is one of those rare movies that can be called a "Day One Disaster." We've all seen movies that have been torn up in post-production or hampered by poor direction or a miscast ensemble but it's usually easy to see what someone saw in the project on day one. Even a well-acknowledged cinematic nightmare like Waterworld or Cutthroat Island started with the intention of making a quality blockbuster. For the life of me, I can't figure out the intention behind Over Her Dead Body, a shrill, cruel, shockingly unfunny film that simply never worked, seemingly not in its script stage, casting, execution, even post-production. Like License to Wed or Failure to Launch, Over Her Dead Body is the kind of date movie that could bring a relationship to a screeching halt. If your date likes it, go back to Match.com.

A bizarrely morbid comedy that somehow still has no "teeth", Over Her Dead Body opens with the death of the about-to-wed 'Bridezilla' Kate (Eva Longoria Parker), a shrill woman who, in the first of many mistakes, writer/director Jeff Lowell never allows the audience to identify with in any way other than kind of cheering her being crushed by a giant angel made of ice. Kate's fiance, Henry (Paul Rudd) has trouble moving on and his sister (Lindsay Sloane) takes him to a psychic named Ashley (Lake Bell), who she hopes can contact Kate and help him deal with his grief. Henry's sister goes as far as to give Ashley Kate's diary to give her some crucial info to convince Henry that she's actually communicating with the dearly departed. After displaying absolutely no idea how people deal with loss or grief, the film then twists into a supernatural comedy as Kate actually appears to Ashley as sort of an 'anti-Clarence' (check out It's a Wonderful Life for the reference) and tries to mess up her blooming relationship with Henry. While Ashley continues to try and date her latest psychic client, Ashley does everything in her power to ruin her life, including making her hear things that aren't there, have hallucinations, and casting Jason Biggs as her business partner. No one deserves that.

There are dozens of comedies released every year that simply aren't funny, but there are usually only a few that go beyond being unfunny to being simply unlikable. We now have the first of 2008. Watching Over Her Dead Body is akin to nails on a chalk board. It just sounds wrong. And the even the good cast members look lost. Rudd is a good-sometimes-great actor who's forced to do an impression of his "sarcastic guy" persona. By the end, he just looks tired. Lake Bell is pretty and will hopefully move on to something better quickly, but she's reduced to such bizarre physical comedy - including running through a gym, topless and covered in soap - that she ends up a victim of the weak screenplay. And poor Eva is left with nothing but maliciousness. For Over Her Dead Body to have a chance of working we need to identify with Kate a little bit. At least make her the anti-hero. It's not like we should root for Kate to ruin Henry's life from beyond the grave, but we need to understand why she would do it for it to be funny. In one of many 'Day One Disaster' decisions, Lowell never bothers with any sort of character detail, giving us merely two-dimensional romantic comedy stereotypes - the Bridezilla, the depressed hero, the cute new girl, and her gay friend. Everyone involved deserve better. Especially you.