Just Like Heaven * 1/2 Leaving “Just Like Heaven” is like finishing a rice cake – there’s not much to remember about the experience one way or the other. Full of romantic-comedy puffery and little real comedy, the movie tries to ride on Reese Witherspoon’s cuteness and Marc Ruffalo’s edgy good looks. Most laughs come from seeing “Napoleon Dynamite” star Jon Heder. PG-13; 90 minutes (Michael Booth)
Elizabethtown * Cameron Crowe seems to be losing his ear for writing dialogue, as this Orlando Bloom vehicle has far more soul in the soundtrack than in the script. Bloom, fired from a high-profile job, must go home to Kentucky to pick up his late father’s body. The town is eccentric and cute, as is love interest Kirsten Dunst. None of the scenes ring true with anything more than sickly sweet nostalgia, presented without evidence or substance. PG-13; 117 minutes (Michael Booth)
Doom * 1/2 That “Doom” is dumb comes as no great shock. That The Rock continues to try to build a movie persona beyond one-note hulking action hero is no surprise. That he fails at every turn … well, you weren’t expecting Brando in “On the Waterfront,” were you? The latest video-game-turned-action-movie sticks to the essentials of the source material, Marines blowing away zombies and mutant monsters on Mars. And it doesn’t bring much more to it. R; 104 minutes (David Germain, The Associated Press)
Waiting ** 1/2 Written and directed by a former waiter, “Waiting” is a raunchy, rude, “Old School”-
style look at the world of the waiting and the waited upon. It’s a knowing and often very funny peek behind those swinging kitchen doors and into the swinging after-hours life in the chain-restaurant universe. Ryan Reynolds is “all about learning the routine,” he assures a new recruit. That routine includes how to deal with hateful customers, how to “push” the foods that are about to spoil in the freezer, how to maintain a relationship with the cooks. R; 100 minutes (Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel)