Over Her Dead Body Made-for-TV movie somehow made it to the big screen

"Over Her Dead Body" is a silly trifle of a film. It's sweet and cute and huggable. The actors mug for the camera, the comedy is heavy handed and the afterlife is unexplored but neat-o. It beats me why this film is on the big screen and not a cable original movie.

Jeff Lowell, the writer and director, wrote the silly "John Tucker Must Die," was the producer for TV's "Sports Night" and "Spin City" and was a writer for "Just Shoot Me." That should give you some idea of what to expect in "Over Her Dead Body." I'm just going to assume if Eva Longoria had passed on the film there would be no film to review.

I can envision Lowell at the studio pitching his idea:

"So picture this: It's a beautiful summer day. A beautiful wedding is about to take place in this beautiful outdoor setting, and this incredible beauty, a real whippersnapper of a bride is giving the help just a horrid time. You see, the bride is very controlling and must have everything just as she wants it. And then this ice sculpture of an angel is delivered -- without wings -- and she just goes nuts and tells them to take it back. The driver does as he's told but drives over some flowers in the process, forcing our bride to physically get between the truck and the flowers. Sadly she's crushed to death by the ice angel. But wait! But wait!

"She's even more controlling in heaven. The first thing she does is start giving this angel a hard time and thus misses important angelic instructions and thus becomes a ghost of some type.

"Meanwhile, a year has passed on earth and her handsome veterinarian fiance is still in the doldrums, so his beautiful sister convinces him to go to a psychic. Now this psychic is a real beauty, but she can't help him.

"The stubborn sister, however, gives the psychic the dead bride's diary so the psychic can tell the fiance to get on with his life. But now the psychic has fallen for him and tells him the dead bride says to start dating ... her!

"Well, this ticks off the dead bride to no end and she starts haunting the psychic, which, as you can imagine, brings up a whole mess of trouble, because, you know, the ghost can appear and disappear and do ghosty stuff. But it's all nice ghosty stuff because, well, the bride was a really nice person, just controlling -- but in a nice way."

(And just when the studio executive has had enough and is going to kick Mr. Lowell out the door ...)

"Did I tell you Eva Longoria is going to play the beautiful but perky dead bride/ghost?"