Goddamn, it’s hard to watch Paul Rudd pay the bills. Sure, he’s handsome and charming enough to play the leading man in some lame romantic comedy, but he’s better when he’s skewering that leading-man potential in farces like Wet Hot American Summer or Strangers With Candy. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s too good for this shit.

Rudd plays Henry, a grumpy but good-hearted veterinarian whose fiancée Kate (Eva Longoria-Parker) is crushed to death by an ice sculpture angel (the ice sculpture and Longoria-Parker have roughly the same warmth and dramatic range). Henry falls for Ashley (Lake Bell), a part-time psychic (and part-time caterer) hired by his sister (Lindsay Sloane) to help him get over Kate. Kate comes back as a ghost, determined to keep them apart.

The film is a graveyard for half-funny clichés: Cat ladies are ca-razay, people talking on cell phones in restaurants are so annoying, David Foster Wallace is impossible to read, farts are freaking hilarious! At one point, Rudd is forced to declare, “Best. Day. Ever,” like he’s 10 years deep in syndication on Fox.

Elsewhere, scenes are padded with standard-issue slapstick: Rudd’s veterinary assistants fumble trying to hoist a big dog; Ashley’s gay friend bumbles around the kitchen, burning himself then dousing himself with boiling water then sliding around on the floor; Ashley splatters a couple gallons of mustard all over herself at a hot dog stand; a flambé goes atomic at a wedding, cartoonishly singeing Ashley’s face.

Against all this mediocrity, Rudd still occasionally manages a great, deadpan comic turn (when the mustard explodes all over Ashley, for instance, he calmly dabs his hot dog into the mess and takes a bite), and Sloane is cute as his airhead sister, but it’s not enough to keep this movie alive.

OVER HER DEAD BODY DIR. JEFF LOWELL | RATED PG-13 | OPENS FRI AT THEATERS EVERYWHERE

Tags: Film, over her dead body, paul rudd