Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Chances Are Blu-ray Movie Review

The Past Isn't Past

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 26, 2014

Director Emile Ardolino first found success as an Emmy- and Oscar-winning director of documentaries about dancers. When he moved to features, he directed two smash hits, Dirty Dancing and Sister Act, before his untimely death at the age of 50 from AIDS-related causes. He also made a romantic comedy called Chances Are that has retained a devoted following ever since its moderately successful release in 1989. The most familiar faces were those of Cybill Shepherd (fresh off her hit series, Moonlighting ) and Ryan O'Neal (still blessed with the boyish good looks that made him a star in the Seventies), but the key role was played by a relative newcomer named Robert Downey Jr., who had to manage the difficult trick of playing two people inhabiting the same body. Downey, as everyone now knows, can do almost anything, and his performance as a reincarnated soul who tries to resume his old life is the crazy center around which Chances Are spins delightfully.

Unfortunately, the Blu-ray presentation from Sony and Image Entertainment leaves much to be desired. More on that below.

In 1964 in Washington, D.C., Louie Jeffries (Christopher McDonald), a young prosecutor, is standing at the altar awaiting his bride, Corinne (Shepherd), when his best friend and best man, Philip Train (O'Neal), leans over and confesses that he, too, is in love with the bride. Louie already knows this, and the ceremony proceeds as planned. On their first wedding anniversary, Corinne announces that she is pregnant. Louie buys her a pair of diamond earrings, but he is late meeting her for dinner because he has followed a tip from Philip, a reporter at the Washington Post, that has led to some disturbing information about the judge (Josef Sommer) on a case assigned to Louie. Rushing to meet Corinne, Louie steps into the street without regard to oncoming traffic. He is hit and dies instantly.

Up in heaven, the celestial bureaucracy works at its own pace, but Louie is impatient to get back to his wife. He causes such a fuss that the officious greeter (Mimi Kennedy) rushes him to the head of the line and sends his soul back to a new life so quickly that Omar (Joe Grifasi), the dispatcher, forgets to give him the injection that erases all memory of his past life.

Twenty-two years later, Louie' soul resides in Alex Finch (Downey), a Yale college student with dreams of being a reporter for the Post. As chance would have it, the baby conceived just before Louie died, Miranda Jeffries (Mary Stuart Masterson), is also at Yale as a law student. (The difference in academic seniority is explained by dialogue about Miranda's skipping a grade.) Miranda never knew her father, but when she and Alex meet, there is an instant connection.

After graduation, Alex travels to Washington and bluffs his way into the office of Post editor Ben Bradlee (Henderson Forsythe). He doesn't get a job, but he does meet Philip, who also takes an instant liking to the young man and brings him to Corinne's home for dinner. Philip, as it turns out, has been acting as surrogate husband and father to Corinne and her daughter ever since Louie's death, even though Corinne has never stopped behaving as if Louie were still there. She spends hours with a shrink (James Noble) trying to learn how to let him go.

When Alex enters the home where he used to live as Louie, memories come flooding back. After the shock and horror wear off, he finds himself in the impossible position of being the third point in two love triangles: one with Corinne and Philip, who still hopes that the woman he loves will one day see him as more than just a friend; and one with Corinne and her own daughter, who finds herself inexplicably drawn to this strange young man she's just met, whereas Alex/Louie now starts treating her like a kid, while he gazes longingly at her mother.

The script by Perry and Randy Howze (who co-wrote Mystic Pizza) gives these charged relationships plenty of room to explore their complications, including a subplot involving Corinne's efforts to solicit donations for her work at the Smithsonian from a wealthy society lady (Fran Ryan); a visit by Alex to an occult bookstore to research past lives, where the proprietess (Susan Rutan) believes she was Cleopatra; and an extended courtship between Alex and Corinne, once she comes to accept that he really is Louie. The eventual resolution is satisfying, even if it doesn't bear close scrutiny. Every bureaucracy I've ever known has lapses and inefficiencies that it eventually has to correct. Why should the heavenly soul bank be any different?

Chances Are Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Chances Are is one of the catalog titles that Sony licensed to Image Entertainment. Image has been sitting on it for a long time, but when it finally released the film to DVD on January 14, 2014, the Blu-ray was postponed an additional three months. Now that the Blu has finally arrived, it's unclear what all the delay was for. While Sony has generally provided Image with excellent transfers, the presentation of Chances Are is a crushing disappointment.

Chances Are was shot by the late William A. Fraker, a notorious perfectionist, three-time president of the cinematographer's guild, and the DP on such notable films as Bullitt, Rosemary's Baby and The Freshman. It is simply not credible that the flat, soft, undetailed and noisy image on this Blu-ray represents either Fraker's or Ardolino's intention. One could perhaps accept such a look due to deliberate use of diffusion for the scenes set in 1964, but all that should change when the film shifts to present day—and it doesn't. The image remains soft, bland and lacking in detail throughout the film's running time.

I always hesitate to speculate about what went wrong when a Blu-ray presentation falls short, but this looks to me like a transfer made from elements multiple generations removed from the negative, so that substantial detail had already been lost. If that is the case, it is hard to imagine why a better quality source could not be found for a film released in 1989.

Is the Blu-ray an improvement over the DVD? Yes, but not by much. (The audio is a different story.) The colors are better differentiated, and the Blu-ray's greater resolution does improve the presentation of large crowds and detailed sets like the interiors of Corinne's Georgetown home. But it's not the kind of quantum leap we usually see, and it comes with a lot of video noise that shouldn't be there. At an average bitrate of 25.03 Mbps, compression problems aren't an issue, but almost everything else is.

Chances Are Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Chances Are was released in Dolby Stereo, which is reproduced on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. It's a solid track with good fidelity, clearly intelligible dialogue and a decent sense of environmental ambiance in crowded scenes like the grand reception that Corinne hosts for her Smithsonian exhibit or the courtroom scene where all the various subplots collide. Scenes like these expand into the rear speakers when the track is played through a good surround decoder. Maurice Jarre's charming score sounds as good as I've ever heard it, as does the essential selection of popular standards that comment on the action, which include Johnny Mathis' "Chances Are" and "Wonderful, Wonderful", Rod Stewart's "Forever Young" and the Oscar-nominated love theme, "After All", which plays both instrumentally and in a vocal rendition by Cher and Peter Cetera. (It lost to "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid.)

Chances Are Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc has no extras. The DVD released by Columba Tristar in 1998 had the film's trailer.

Chances Are Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Chances Are is a delightful and original romantic comedy that still holds up. The Blu-ray produced by Sony and Image is a botched effort, but it's the best the film has ever looked, or is likely to look, on home video for the foreseeable future. It's up to you.