1987 film by Frank Perry
Hello Again is a 1987 American romantic fantasy-comedy film directed and produced by Frank Perry, written by Susan Isaacs and starring Shelley Long, Judith Ivey, Gabriel Byrne, Corbin Bernsen, Sela Ward, Austin Pendleton, Carrie Nye, Robert Lewis, Madeleine Potter, Thor Fields and Illeana Douglas.
Plot
Long Island housewife Lucy Chadman is in the midst of a tarot card reading by her sister, Zelda. Just as Zelda exclaims something is going to happen, Lucy begins to choke to death on a South Korean chicken ball. The film shows the difficulty of Lucy's loved ones, including Zelda, had in coping with her death. But the grief turns to excitement when Zelda receives a book of spells called The Wisdom of Catagonia. Within the book Zelda finds a spell that requires perfect astrological timing—the moon, the earth, and the dog star must form a perfect isosceles triangle. Zelda performs the spell and Lucy appears.
Lucy begins to reacquaint herself with living and with her family who are shocked to see her alive again, one year later, and soon discovers that she cannot simply pick her life back up where she left off. She returns to find her widower husband has sold their home and married her greedy and double-crossing friend from college. Meanwhile, her son has opened his own successful restaurant and married, instead of going to Columbia.
When she returns to the hospital in which she died, the emergency room doctor who tried to revive her begins to fall for her. Zelda confides in the doctor that if Lucy does not find love by the next full moon, she will have to go back to the spirit world. He does not believe Zelda. Eventually, the press finds out that Lucy came back from the dead, and plague her, her family, and the hospital the ER doctor works at. Her college friend becomes jealous of her media attention and the attention Lucy is getting from Mr. Chadman. She holds a news conference of her own and tells the media Lucy made the whole thing up—claiming that Lucy used tetrodotoxin as a means to fake her own death. Lucy does not defend herself, as she sees this as an opportunity to rid herself and her friends of the media. Instead, the doctor gets fired, her sister's occult store is vandalized and she is hated by almost everyone, except her family. She decides to end the debacle once and for all by tricking her college friend into admitting she lied about Lucy faking her death in front of the media at a party the hospital is having. Lucy, the doctor, and her family walk away happily. As the credits roll, we see that both Lucy and Zelda get married and have children with their new loves. Lucy's son also becomes a father.
Reception
Hello Again was released theatrically by Touchstone Pictures on November 6, 1987. The film opened at No. 2 at the box office, earning $5,712,892 at its opening weekend. It ultimately grossed $20,419,446 in its entire run.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 10% of 21 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.7/10.[1] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on a scale of A+ to F.[2]
Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars out of 4, complaining that it went for "sitcom dialogue" and "funny one-liners," rather than honestly exploring "how people would respond to the reappearance of a dead person."[3] Gene Siskel gave it 1 and a half stars, labeling it a "pathetic comedy" with humor that didn't work at all. [4] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "a high-concept comedy with a terminally low laugh content."[5]
