Curator Watchlist
Chances Are
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.… Read more
Curator Watchlist
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.… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 1h 48m
Director: Emile Ardolino
Starring: Cybill Shepherd, Robert Downey Jr., Ryan O'Neal
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.
Emile Ardolino
Cybill Shepherd, Robert Downey Jr., Ryan O'Neal
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
A similarly playful time-bending fantasy about memory, regret, and rethinking a life through an impossible premise.
A romantic fantasy built on longing, destiny, and the emotional pull of crossing time to reach someone again.
A warm, witty afterlife comedy that uses the supernatural to explore love, fear, and self-knowledge.
Shares the same late-80s blend of wish-fulfillment fantasy, romance, and a gentle studio-comedy tone.
A polished fairy-tale romance that balances sincerity and comedy while playing with genre expectations.
A sentimental alternate-life romance about fate, missed chances, and the emotional cost of different choices.
A romantic fantasy centered on impossible connection and the melancholy of love shaped by time.
An elegant supernatural romance with wistfulness, restraint, and a strong sense of emotional atmosphere.
A classic reincarnation-and-second-chance comedy that helped define the template for this kind of high-concept fantasy.
A charming body-swap/afterlife comedy that mixes romance, fate, and a light touch with metaphysical ideas.
A romantic fantasy about love, loss, and lingering presence, with a similarly earnest late-80s sensibility.
A whimsical romantic fantasy with a broad studio-comedy approach and a strong interest in destiny and attraction.
reincarnation, fate and second chances, memory and identity, afterlife fantasy, forbidden attraction, romantic comedy, family dynamics, 1980s studio charm
fantasy romance, romantic comedy, reincarnation, afterlife, identity crisis, forbidden love, 1980s, sentimental, offbeat, cult curiosity