Chances Are

Chances Are is a 1989 American romantic comedy film directed by Emile Ardolino and starring Cybill Shepherd, Robert Downey Jr., Ryan O'Neal, and Mary Stuart Masterson in Panavision. The original music score was composed by Maurice Jarre. Plot Louie Jeffries, a young district attorney, is hit by a car and dies in 1964, but manages to slip by the pearly gates and is instantly reborn. In 1987, 23 years later, his widow Corinne still misses him, ignoring the frustrated devotion of his best friend Phillip Train, who has pretty much raised Louie's only daughter Miranda as his own. Miranda, while a student at Yale University, meets Alex Finch, who works in the library but is about to graduate. After graduation, Alex heads to Washington, D.C., where he makes his way to the offices of The Washington Post. His first attempts to meet with Ben Bradlee thwarted, he schemes his way into Bradlee's office by pretending to be a delivery man. Alex walks into Bradlee's office, with Phillip behind him. Confounded by the young man, Bradlee asks who he is. When Alex attempts to remind him of their meeting at Yale, Phillip vouches for him, which changes his mind about giving him a meeting. Unfortunately, Bradlee feels Alex needs more time working on smaller papers before he can offer him a job. Feeling defeated, Alex leaves his office. Phillip finds Alex downstairs in the lobby, who offers Phillip a ride, during which Phillip invites Alex to meet the Jeffries family over dinner. While at the Jeffries' home, which he'd never previously been to, Alex begins to have flashbacks of a previous life. Anguished, he begins to act crazed and confused. Putting the pieces together, Alex realizes he is Louie Jeffries, Corinne's dead husband, reincarnated.