| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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CHANCES ARE
Rating: 
USA. 1989.
Director – Emile Ardolino, Screenplay – Perry & Randy Howze, Producer – Mike Lobell, Photography – William A. Fraker, Music – Maurice Jarre, Special Effects – Stan Parks, Production Design – Dennis Washington. Production Company – Tri-Star.
Cast:
Robert Downey Jr (Alex Finch), Cybill Shepherd (Corinne Jeffries), Ryan O’Neal (Philip Traine), Mary Stuart Masterson (Miranda Jeffries), Christopher McDonald (Louie Jeffries), Joe Grifasi (Omar), Josef Sommer (Judge Harrison Fenwick)
Plot: Lawyer Louie Jeffries is rushing home to his pregnant wife Corinne when he is hit by a car while crossing the street and killed. Up in Heaven he is so anxious to return to her that he rushes off without receiving the injection that all reincarnating souls are given to obliterate memory of their previous lives. Twenty-three years later. Louie is now in the body of Alex Finch, a librarian who works at the university that Miranda, his and Corinne’s now grown daughter attends. Louie’s old friend, editor Philip Traine, who has harboured a longtime crush on Corinne, invites Alex to dinner at Corinne’s place. Miranda develops an interest in him. But while there Louie’s personality emerges and takes over Alex. Considerable upset is caused when he tries to convince Corinne of who he is and romance her again.
Chances Are was an entry in the late 1980s spate of bodyswap comedies that also included the likes of Like Father, Like Son (1987), Big (1988), 18 Again (1988), Vice Versa (1988) and Dream a Little Dream (1989). The film held a certain initial promise. It was directed by director Emile Ardolino, who had just made the breathily sensual teen pic Dirty Dancing (1987), which had become the smash hit of its year. And it also featured Cybill Shepherd, the effervescent delight of that gem in the late 1980s tv wasteland, Moonlighting (1985-9).
But the results emerge as utterly tedious. The crosseyed Shepherd plays with a blank vacancy of expression. She’s someone who needs a sympathetic director to bring her out and Ardolino is unfortunately not that. He is happy to merely ship her and the rest of the cast about in a forced freneticism that he mistakes for comedy. Robert Downey gives a rather hopped-up performance – given his later drug convictions, it’s hard not to believe he was wired during the shooting. There’s a really embarrassingly silly scene where he dances with an old age dowager. Between the hyperkinetic Downey and the vacant Shepherd, there is not a single moment of conviction to the romance.
Everything is shot with a misty-lensed romanticism. It is a film that feels like it has been made for people in retirement homes – the film is corny, looks old-fashioned and is wound up with eminent predictability where everyone gets the object of their heart’s desire and justice wins out. Nothing can really describe what a boring film this is.
Emile Ardolino went onto direct Three Man and a Little Lady (1990) and Sister Act (1992) and then died of AIDS in 1993.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2002
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