Movie · 1989 · Fantasy, Comedy, Romance · 1h 48m · PG · English
Curator score: 2.4/10 (22.8K ratings)
Alex has a lifetime full of wonderful memories. Unfortunately, they're not his.
Overview
Louie Jeffries is happily married to Corinne. On their first anniversary, Louie is killed crossing the road. Louie is reincarnated as Alex Finch, and twenty years later, fate brings Alex and Louie's daughter, Miranda, together. It's not until Alex is invited to Louie's home that he begins to remember his former life, wife and best friend. Of course, there's also the problem that he's attracted to Louie's/his own daughter.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.4/10
IMDb: 6.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.06/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 66%
Metacritic: 62
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Emile Ardolino
Production
TriStar Pictures
Cast
Cybill Shepherd, Robert Downey Jr., Ryan O'Neal, Mary Stuart Masterson, Christopher McDonald, Josef Sommer, Joe Grifasi, Henderson Forsythe, Susan Ruttan, Lester Lanin, Richard DeAngelis, James Noble, Fran Ryan, Marc McClure, Mimi Kennedy, Kathleen Freeman, Dennis Patrick, Gianni Russo, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Jacquelyn Drake
Curator Review
Verdict
A breezy, oddball fantasy-romance with an appealing early Robert Downey Jr. performance, but its premise is so awkward that the movie never fully escapes the discomfort it creates. If you can accept a high-concept soap opera with a soft-focus 80s charm, it has enough sweetness and comic invention to be interesting.
Best for
fans of offbeat 1980s romantic comedies
viewers curious about early Robert Downey Jr.
people who like reincarnation or afterlife premises
audiences open to sentimental, lightly surreal studio comedies
Skip if
you are sensitive to incest-adjacent plotlines
you want a clean, modern romcom
you dislike dated 80s tonal gloss
you need the premise to stay emotionally believable
Overview
Chances Are is the kind of late-80s studio fantasy that feels both polished and wildly misguided. Emile Ardolino stages it with a light touch, and the movie keeps trying to be charming, wistful, and whimsical even as the premise pushes into deeply uncomfortable territory. The result is a film that is easier to admire as an artifact than to embrace without reservations.
Worth noting
Robert Downey Jr. gives the movie its spark, bringing wit and restlessness to a role that could have been purely schematic. Cybill Shepherd and Ryan O'Neal help sell the romantic-comedy machinery, and the film’s best stretches lean into its reincarnation premise with genuine curiosity rather than shock value. There is a real sweetness in the way it imagines fate, memory, and second chances.
Bottom line
But the central relationship logic is hard to ignore, and the ending asks for a level of acceptance that many viewers simply will not grant. For some, that tension will make it memorable; for others, it will make it unwatchable. It is a curious, sometimes charming misfire with a strong cult-movie aftertaste.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Kat (1.5★) · 227 likes
Shooter McGavin dies in a car accident and gets reincarnated as RDJ, but the angels in heaven forget to give him an amnesia shot. So when he meets his former wife and friend his memories come back.
He convinces his former wife of who he is and they almost boink, but then he helps his friend boink his wife instead. The angels come down to earth and give him his amnesia shot so he forgets who his true soul is.… more
Satchel (2.5★) · 157 likes
who thought the right ending to this movie would be to erase the dads memories so that he ends up getting together with his own daughter?
eely (2.5★) · 127 likes
imagine getting two lives and getting to make out with cybill shepherd in both of them
irene 🎞 (3★) · 123 likes
young rdj im free on thursday night
carina ☆ (2.5★) · 88 likes
You know what’s fun when you go through an actor’s filmography? You stumble across the most unhinged story ideas for romcoms (spoiler ahead, but I assume nobody wants to watch this anyway).
Like, what do you mean? A husband and soon-to-be father gets hit by a truck and dies. He is then reincarnated as Alex Finch (RDJ), falls in love with his daughter from his past life, regains his memories, and hooks up with his former wife — until some… more