Another Downey must-see! If you are an obsessed fan like me, you have got to see this movie! He plays Alex Finch, a 22 year old Yale grad who realizes that the life he just came into is the life he left 26 years earlier. Alex is the re-incarnation of Louie Jeffries, a no-nonsense lawyer happily married to Corrine (Cybil Sheppard). Louie is killed on their one-year anniversary when he is hit by a car. He demands to go back, only this time in the body of Alex Finch. Enter Robert Downey Jr., a lot of confusion, and a lot of laughs.

Although this movie is 15-years old, it still makes you wonder if there really is such a thing as re-incarnation. And if so, how often to you meet the same souls life after life. I don't know the answer. But I do know that you need to see this movie. It is a riot, and Downey looks SO GOOD in a tuxedo. This film makes you believe in love, and true love never dies. It just gets recycled.

Robert Downey, Jr. was never more relaxed and clean-cut--and benign--than he is here, cast as an ambitious young man who crosses paths with an older woman still mourning the death of her husband many years prior. Before you can say "déjà vu", Downey begins to understand he's the reincarnation of the woman's beloved...and that her playfully flirtatious daughter is actually his child too! Tasteful, easy-to-take romantic comedy written by Perry and Randy Howze mixes sentiment and farcical elements rather smoothly, and director Emile Ardolino keeps things moving fast, but there's nothing of substance here to make the film meaningful (or even memorable). When the Howze team do attempt a sense of seriousness (as with Ryan O'Neal telling Cybill Shepherd the only man to ever "come back" was Jesus Christ), the movie comes to a halt. There are some good performances, particularly by Shepherd (very low-keyed) and a twinkling Mary Stuart Masterson, but the picture is so cozy and glossy it practically evaporates. ** from ****

How often do you find a film where everybody is so nice that you just root for them to find happiness regardless of the situation? That's the case for the widowed Cybil Shepherd, a Smithsonian curator so deeply in love with her late husband (Chris McDonald) that she's been in therapy for decades trying to get over his sudden death. Along comes Robert Downey Jr. Who appears to be McDonald's reincarnation, now dating Shepherd's daughter, Mary Stuart Masterson. Shepherd and McDonald's best friend, Ryan O'Neal, has stuck around for decades, always in love with Shepherd but unable to tell her. When Downey realizes the truth upon coming back to his (or McDonald's) old home, the old memories come back and this puts all four leading characters into a very precarious predicament.

"I'm so ripe I'm about to fall off the vine", Shepherd tells her therapist, James Noble. But is she so ripe that she would take away her daughter's boyfriend just because of an accident of reincarnation? Certainly the way McDonald was killed right in front of Shepherd's eyes is an understandable reason for her unable to accept the loss, and their love was so pure that you can feel her pain coming off of her like a grape from the vine.

There are other aspects of this film that makes it a fantasy comedy well worth seeing and filled with emotions that can make it both funny and tear jerking at the same time. Of course there's the classic Johnny Mathis song that opens up the film, but there's also the newly written song "After All", sung by Cher and Peter Cetera that is one of the greatest movie theme songs not to win the Academy Award. It's one of those songs that upon hearing it inside or out of the movie will create a dewy feeling.

Then there is veteran character actress Fran Ryan playing a Washington matron whom Downey charms, dancing her into a tizzy as she gets more and more rambunctious but unable to keep up with the much younger man. A plot line involving McDonald witnessing a judge with an organized crime lord seems thrown in for no good reason, but it does have a point that you need to stick with to see it unfold. Veteran character actors Henderson Forsythe, Dennis Patrick and Josef Summer also figure into the plot in important smaller roles, and the wonderful Kathleen Freeman is very funny in her bit role as the Yale library manager.

The sequence in heaven will remind you immediately of "Heaven Can Wait", but it is very funny with confusion allowing McDonald/Downey to be reincarnated without having his previous life memory removed. This is a film that is pleasing on so many levels, mostly spiritually because it reminds us of the power of love that never leaves our soul just because someone has been taken away from us in earthly form.