Heaven Movie Review - Part 8

Subtitle: A Ridiculously In-Depth Analysis of the Heaven Movie that Nobody Asked For. But Here It Is. Blame Lifetime.

• Cal is Hipster Hot, which seems out of place in a movie that’s supposed to be set in the 1960’s, but I do not mind the eye candy. Carry on, Movie Cal. He shakes Heaven’s hand and says it’s nice to meet her. She says it’s nice to meet him, too, but seems much less enthusiastic. Her apathy towards Cal is short lived.

Can you really blame her, though?

• As they prepare for their journey back to Atlanta, Kitty tells Heaven that she had to take a day off work to come get her. Right, of course, from the hair salon that she owns and is the best in Atlanta. Nope, apparently in this Heaven Alternate Universe Kitty is now a dental hygienist.

This would be doubly true for Book Kitty. She will cut you.

• First Logan’s father is a butcher instead of a pharmacist, and now Kitty is a dental hygienist instead of the best hair stylist in all of Atlanta. Why all of these career changes, Scarlett Lacey? We never see where Kitty works so why couldn’t she have stayed a hairdresser?

Book Kitty definitely had this coffee mug

• Hairdressers usually just wear their own clothes with maybe an apron or smock over top. How much easier would that have been, Wardrobe Department, than a whole dental hygienist’s uniform where Kitty’s last name isn’t even spelled right on her name tag? It says “Kitty M.” when her name is Kitty Dennison.

This is about as cool as it gets for dental hygienist coffee mugs. Kitty's new job is as lame as it's swag.

• Kitty says that her dental hygienist job allows her to earn a lot of money. She also explains that Cal is a novelist who doesn’t earn one penny from his writing. In the book, Cal actually ran a TV repair shop that Kitty helped set him up with and he’s $25,000 in debt to her. Book Cal must have at least contributed some money to the household because he did actually work.

• Movie Cal contributes nothing to the household except his moan-inducing massage skills and his talents in the bedroom. Which would be fine if he didn’t also happen to partake in sleeping with the teenage girl he adopted under the same roof that Kitty is fully funding. His clothes, food and everything he has are all because of his Sugar Mama. Where’s your loyalty, Cal, even if your wife is an unhinged lunatic?

Kitty brings home the bacon and the sugar

• Kitty makes an odd segue from Cal’s occasional writer’s block to the fact that they can’t have kids, but they love kids. Kitty’s future actions prove this to be a dubious claim on her part, but Cal does certainly develop a fondness for the kid he adopted.

• Cal must have a lead foot because they somehow make it all the way from West Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia while it’s still daylight. According to Google Maps that’s almost a nine hour drive. The journey in the book was more realistic and they didn’t arrive in Atlanta until late in the evening.

• Kitty is talking about Cal as Heaven takes a look around her new house. “Isn’t he dreamy?” Kitty muses to Heaven. Seeing the trap in that question, Heaven chooses a neutral answer and asks how they met. Kitty says she placed a personal ad in the local paper and that “Gorgeous hunk of love answered.”

This guy couldn't get a date until he answered a personal ad in the newspaper? Okay then. You might as well just give up on dating entirely, Other Men. Picture from "Sailing into Love."

• Book Kitty actually met Cal in Atlanta when he was on his way to Florida for Spring Break. He was going to Yale to be a history professor at the time, but he dropped out to marry Kitty who set him up with his TV repair shop.

• Movie Kitty mentions that there’s a few years between her and Cal, give or take, but she didn’t let that stand in her way of going to Cougar Town. In the book there was actually a 10 year age difference between Kitty and Cal. He’s twenty-five and she’s thirty-five when Heaven comes to live with them.

• We never find out the exact age difference between Movie Kitty and Cal. Julie Benz is 47? Damn she looks good. Chris McNally is 26 so he's actually very close to Book Cal. That's more like a Jillian and Tony age difference in real life, though. She lied when she met him and told him she was 30 when she was really 40.

Or well under your age in Cal's case

• Julie Benz is amazing as Kitty. She’s rocking the Southern accent and manages to breathe life into even the clunkiest of dialogue. In regards to Cal, Kitty says to Heaven, “Hubba Hubba Husband, huh?” Julie Benz sells even this incredibly corny line with flair. She’s a master of her craft to be able to take cheesy Lifetime dialogue and make it work somehow.

Thank you for taking the role of Kitty, Julie Benz. Lifetime is not worthy of your talent, but thanks for taking the part anyways for your love of V.C. Andrews.

• Kitty calls herself an artiste, just like Cal, and shows Heaven some macrame that she made. She says her true passion has always been the arts.

• Book Kitty did think of herself as an artist, but she made animals and other designs out of ceramics. She even hosted classes and taught other people. Except towards the end of the book it turns out she actually made them all from molds that she’d bought. Which raises the question of exactly what she was teaching in those classes?

It turns out all of Kitty's classes were so popular because all her students were men. This is how she managed to convince them that she was the most amazing ceramics teacher in the world.

• Movie Kitty says that making art has already been her hobby, but now Heaven can be her new hobby. I don’t need the foreboding music that chimes in to tell me that’s a terrifying statement.

• Heaven asks about school and if she’ll be taking the bus. Kitty tells her that she was thinking since it’s so close to the end of the semester that she might as well have a lovely time at home and start fresh in the new year. I have no idea how far away that might be because it’s hard to tell what Season it is. Book Heaven probably would have objected because she loved school and knew it was important to reaching her goal of becoming a teacher.

We get it, Heaven. You really like school.

• In the book Kitty actually allowed Heaven to go to school because she didn’t want “her kid to be dumb.” Heaven had to fit Kitty’s very long list of chores in between school and homework.

• Movie Heaven doesn’t seem thrilled about the idea of missing out on school, but doesn’t really say much. Kitty says they can get to know each other and have some fun, but first they have to roll up their sleeves and clean the house because it’s a mess. Heaven just looks around the immaculate house with great confusion.

• As Kitty is talking to Heaven about Cal and school she’s rubbing at invisible smudges that only her eyes can detect on furniture and a vase. It’s a brilliant way to show how OCD she is about cleaning in a few small actions while she’s also talking.

Kitty's worst nemesis

Up Next in Part 9:

V.C. Andrews writes the worst fortune cookies!

I have to give Lifetime credit for knowing what a basic literary concept is!

You can't own the pants you didn't pay anything for, Cal!