Plot of Little Bit of Heaven, Recreated Using Quotes from Passive-Aggressive Reviews
I know the big story is that The Avengers opens today, and thus you may have missed this, but did you know that there’s also a rom-com coming out about Kate Hudson getting ass cancer, and it’s called “Little Bit of Heaven”? And that “Little Bit of Heaven” is also the name of a gay dwarf prostitute played by Peter Dinklage? And that Kate Hudson meets God, in the form of Whoopi Goldberg, who urges her to find love? These are things that I now know.
Again, if you’re not familiar with our “Plot Recreated with Passive Aggressive Reviews” feature, the way it works is, we try to piece together an entire terrible movie using only summary quotes written by put-upon critics. This one’s going to be fun.
As the picture opens, Marley rushes out of her criminally-cute apartment to dash off to her job — late again! — on her charmingly rusty vintage bicycle. She arrives at work just in time to give a killer presentation that lands her company a big new client, a condom manufacturer. (Movieline)
The sun doesn’t just shine but also bathes her in radiant, honeyed light. Life is just one long and lovely feminine hygiene commercial. (NYTimes)
One of the hottest female ad executives in the business, she’s married to her job. She’s also a bit of a commitment-phobe. (ReelViews)
A self-described slut, Marley also has a hookup book that she regularly dips into for recreational sex. (NYTimes)
Her buddies and family think her current friend with benefits, Rob, might make great husband material, but she’s not sold. She likes him, but doesn’t “like him like that.” (ReelViews)
She lives in an apartment with a colorful horse painted on the wall and a functional, frilly swing in the dining room (AV Club)
…has a gorgeous courtyard apartment in New Orleans, complete with sassy gay black neighbor (Romany Malco) and adorably mush-faced bulldog. (TheWrap)
Marley Corbett has a sunny irreverence and Teflon resistance to emotional attachment that leaves her happily impervious to just about everything, even when, one fine day, she’s diagnosed with colon cancer. (VillageVoice)
She is losing weight and has rectal bleeding. (SFChronicle)
Marley finally sees a doctor about her run-down state, and wouldn’t you know, that doc, Dr. Goldstein, EW
a “Jewish Mexican,” (ReelViews)
is single, cute, and played by moist-eyed Gael García Bernal. (EW)
Hudson flirts with Bernal as he preps her for a colonoscopy, followed by a fantasy sequence in which Hudson’s spirit travels to heaven and talks to God, who takes the form of Whoopi Goldberg, who informs her, sassily, that she’s dying. The Almighty grants her three wishes on the way out, however, though She knows—being omniscient and all—that what Hudson really wants is to find love before she dies. (AV Club)
One colonoscopy, failed clinical trial, and death sentence later, and the two are in love. (EW)
Marley begins by treating the diagnosis as good material for “pain in the ass” jokes. (VillageVoice)
She has a way of cocking her head just a little, like a winsome blond puppy. (Movieline)
until the progress of the illness gradually breaks down Marley and her defenses, allowing her to become truly intimate with her doctor. (VillageVoice)
The two go to drag bars and blues clubs when they’re not adorably traipsing through the streets of the Crescent City in one montage after another. Who’s got time for bed-rest when there are hang-gliding lessons to be had? (TheWrap)
Even when Hudson bottoms out in a self-destructive depressive spiral, it’s played for maximum quirk via a scene that sends her bicycling through the streets wearing pajamas and chugging whiskey. (The only suggestion Hudson is getting sicker comes from the way her hair loses some of its body and luster) (AVclub)
The script helpfully informs us that her treatment would not cause all her hair to fall out. (ReelViews)
About the only bad thing that happens to her physically is that she stops wearing makeup. (SF Chronicle)
A shopping montage in which Marley spends down her life-insurance money by showering her loved ones with gifts. (Movieline)
In one scene she criticizes her mother (Kathy Bates) for not letting her masturbate in public as a child. (SF Chronicle)
The sassy gay neighbor (Romany Malco, who plays every scene in pastels or black bikini underwear) sends a diminutive hustler (Peter Dinklage) over to Marley’s apartment. (TheWrap)
The best scene features Peter Dinklage as a dwarf prostitute. (ReelViews)
The film’s title, incidentally, winds up being the nickname for Dinklage’s character. (Wrap)
A Little Bit of Heaven also provides helpful lessons about colon cancer and colonoscopies delivered in professorial snippets. (ReelViews)
Enter God, who looks so much like Whoopi that even Marley remarks that she looks like Whoopi. (ReelViews)
Marley has conversations with God as a way to let her know that death isn’t so bad. In fact, it’s pretty damn cool. No need to get upset when the end of the movie comes and no miraculous cure has been discovered. (ReelViews)
The film’s reassuring nondenominational concept of the afterlife is a long, warm soak. (VillageVoice)
So she dies at the end? Damn, they should’ve called this “Kate Hudson Dies at the End,” maybe capture some of that rom-com-hating crossover audience. Or maybe “Marley and Me and Ass Cancer.”
Also, if ever you’re writing a script and you feel tempted to include a joke in which a character comments about how another character in your movie looks like the actual actor playing that character… STOP DRILLIN, ‘CAUSE YOU’VE HIT ROCK BOTTOM! That is the absolute zero of hack jokes.
Sources: SF Chonicle, Movieline, NYTimes, TheWrap, The AVClub, ReelViews, VillageVoice, EntertainmentWeekly