Sick Watch: “A Little Bit of Heaven”

Kate Hudson is the ultimate manic pixie dying girl in the 2011 cancer rom-com that begs the question: should cancer patients hook up with their doctors?

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There are a few rules for women characters in movies who have cancer. Like, for instance, you can’t be a bitch. Sorry, but if you’re going to have cancer you have to be likeable. Acting like a cunt is a stage 4 crime against the Cancer Positivity Industrial Complex.

Another rule for women cancer characters is that they have to love life. Not in the normal way. Most of us enjoy a nice, full chest of oxygen and a body devoid of tumors. These characters, however, live like adult babies. They run around barefoot in the rain, unconcerned for the possible presence of a rusty nail on the pavement; they install a wooden swing in their kitchen just in case the urge to have a cheeky sway hits in the middle of making a Denver omelette; they wear lots of crochets. They are Manic Pixie Dying Girls.

That’s what we’re dealing with in “A Little Bit of Heaven.”

The 2011 cancer rom-com, written by Gren Wells and directed by Nicole Kassell, stars Kate Hudson as Marley, a New Orleans ad executive who “always lived life to the fullest,” according to the trailer. For our irreverent queen Marley, that means being the kind of girl who chugs Pepto before riding a bike to the office hungover and, upon meeting her new hot doctor during a colonoscopy, asks if they’ve ever had sex, as you do in all medical interactions.

She’s brash and improper and having a good ole time, which is ostensibly supposed to make us love her. Unfortunately for Marley, this is a cancer movie. You know what happens to a free-spirited blonde who lives life to the fullest in one of these joints? Terminal colon cancer.

Two things I gotta get off my chest first. One: the name Marley. No one gets a cutesy name in a cancer movie and lives. Your name ends with a -y sound? Casket. Two: If you needed a manic pixie dream girl in the early ‘10s, Kate Hudson is who you called. She cornered the market on that quirked-up shit. And this film allows her to build off the trope by giving the audience a Manic Pixie Dying Girl. Yes, she has months to live, but she’s still a kook, folks.