Taglines: Life starts now.
Marley Corbett (Kate Hudson) is a quickwitted, carefree ad executive living in New Orleans, who embraces her easy going attitude, shuns any major responsibilities, and gains support and strength from a close circle of friends. She also enjoys casual dating and refuses to fall in love. One day, after an appointment, she is told by Dr. Julian Goldstein that she has terminal cancer. He is deeply impressed by the way Marley accepts the news with humour and dignity. While under anesthetic, God appears to Marley in heaven and asks her to make three wishes. She chooses to fly, to win a million dollars (not tax free), and a third that is later revealed.
Marley tells her friends the news, including her parents who separated years earlier and don’t speak now. Her mother is persistent and overbearing, and instantly begins to smother Marley by visiting too often and making her meals to keep her strength up. Marley’s father is the opposite; distant and reserved, and doesn’t seem bothered with reconnecting with Marley with the time she has left. While driving through town one morning, Marley and her friend Sarah decide to take part in a radio call game where the 97th caller wins a prize. They get through and Marley is told she’s won flying lessons – her first wish granted. Her other friend Renee is pregnant with her second child.
As the weeks go by, Marley’s health starts to deteriorate and she visits Julian more and more. One night, they see each other at a band night at their local bar and decide to spend the rest of the night by going on a date. They start to develop feelings for one another. Marley tells her boss about the cancer and he asks her about her life insurance plans, since their company has a policy that anybody who has a life-threatening illness can cash out, gaining a million dollars ($500,000 dollars after tax) instantly – her second wish.
After another date, Marley and Julian sleep together and begin a relationship. However, she soon starts to feel dismayed when she comes to the realisation that they won’t have a future together, and flees quickly one morning before he wakes. That afternoon, they argue in the park and Marley breaks it off. She becomes distant from and jealous of her friends who are all going through positive changes.
After visiting heaven in her dreams for a second time, God makes her realise that she needs to cherish what she has while she’s still alive and, for the first time, Marley admits to being in love. Later that day, she visits Julian to rekindle their relationship, apologizes to the friends she has pushed away and even makes peace with her father.
A Little Bit of Heaven (formerly titled Earthbound) is a 2011 romantic comedy film directed by Nicole Kassell, and starring Kate Hudson, Gael García Bernal, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lucy Punch, Romany Malco, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Dinklage, Kathy Bates, Charlotte Bass and Brett Rice.
Film Review for A Little Bit of Heaven
Kate Hudson is a free-spirited woman (does she play any other kind?) dying from “ass cancer” in A Little Bit of Heaven, an awkward mixture of melodrama and whimsical romantic comedy that should make the briefest of appearances in theaters before, like its main character, moving on to other planes. It might serve a valuable purpose if it at least prompts viewers to finally schedule those long delayed colonoscopies.
Advertising exec Marley (Hudson) lives a carefree existence in New Orleans, signaled by her early morning bike rides through the scenic environs of the French Quarter. The sort of irreverent type who turns a pitch meeting with a condom manufacturer into a comic diatribe about female sexuality, she’s commitment-phobic and happily childless despite such positive examples as her pregnant best friend’s (Rosemarie DeWitt)’s domestic bliss.
Her world is rocked when she undergoes a colonoscopy after some troublesome symptoms and is informed that she’s suffering from an aggressive form of colon cancer. During the procedure, she has a fantasy of ascending to heaven where she meets God, who takes the form of Whoopi Goldberg and grants her three wishes.
During her debilitating chemotherapy treatments, Marley finds herself comforted by her burgeoning romance with her hunky physician (Gael Garcia Bernal), who one of her friends (Lucy Punch) points out is the sort of impossibly good-looking doctor who only appears in soap operas. His Mexican-Jewish heritage does, however, provide the opportunity for Marley to joke about going out for “gefilte fish tacos.”
Her friends and family — including her meddlesome mother (Kathy Bates) and estranged, control-freak father (Treat Williams) — do their best to offer moral support. Her gay neighbor (Romany Malco) even arranges for a visit by a dwarf male escort (a very funny Peter Dinklage), whose amusing self-description provides the film’s title.
Will Marley learn to embrace love before it’s too late? That’s the not quite burning central issue of Gren Wells’ tone-deaf screenplay, which features such lines as Marley’s declaration that, “I want to put the ‘fun’ back in funeral.” Director Nicole Kassell (The Woodsman) relies heavily on the photogenic charms of the two leads, as well as the solid performances by the prestigious supporting cast. But their efforts are not enough to make this trivialization of a tragic subject any more palatable.
A Little Bit of Heaven (2012)
Directed by: Nicole Kassell
Starring: Kate Hudson, Gael García Bernal, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lucy Punch, Romany Malco, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Dinklage, Kathy Bates, Charlotte Bass, Brett Rice
Screenplay by: Gren Wells
Production Design by: Stuart Wurtzel
Cinematography by: Russell Carpenter
Film Editing by: Stephen A. Rotter
Costume Design by: Ann Roth
Set Decoration by: Helen Britten
Art Direction by: W. Steven Graham
Music by: Heitor Pereira
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, including crude references, and language.
Distributed by: Millennium Entertainment, The Weinstein Company
Release Date: February 4, 2011 (United Kingdom), May 4, 2012 (United States)
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