Chances Are

(Emile Ardolino, USA, 1989)

Curious fantasies lurk below the surface of even the most seemingly lightweight and whimsical of popular movies.

Take this romantic comedy, which gives widow Corinne (Cybill Shepherd) back Louis, her previously deceased husband, in the reincarnated, teenage form of Alex (Robert Downey, Jr.) – with Corinne’s ever-faithful best friend, Phillip (Ryan O’Neal) and daughter Miranda (Mary Stuart Masterson) waiting patiently on the outcome.

It’s an effortlessly charming, superbly acted divertissement directed by the talented Emile Ardolino [1943-1993] of Dirty Dancing (1987) fame. But it’s also, secretly, quite thrilling. That’s because it plays on: a. the public scandal of a middle-aged woman cavorting with a lad young enough to be her son; b. the hint of a Big Chill-style threesome between Corinne, Alex and Phillip (remember the queer-trio dance scene in Dirty Dancing!); and c. the possibility of a reincarnated Dad committing incest with his grown daughter.

This is what a film critic like me calls a fine fantasy scenario bubbling away and driving the surface entertainment-values!

Nothing terribly transgressive eventuates, naturally. Ardolino guides this comedy of manners (scripted by the little-known duo of Perry & Randy Howze) in and out of its deep waters with boundless finesse and guile – it’s like the smoother, slicker version of a Blake Edwards dream-comedy. Stylistically, it’s in the dextrous, light-entertainment ballpark of James Lapine’s film and stage work.

Ardolino aims for a certain, somewhat Lubitschian sophistication: where most American movies of the 1980s like to refer to Bugs Bunny, Chuck Berry and The Flintstones, Chances Are tips its hat to The Smithsonian Institute, Moby-Dick and glasnost. To each their own!

MORE Ardolino: Sister Act

© Adrian Martin 2 October 1991