This is a remake of the 1943 similar film "A Guy Named Joe" starring Spencer Tracy. Here, Richard Dreyfuss plays Spence's part as the doomed pilot who comes back from the afterlife to guide another pilot. The other pilot and Dreyfuss' girlfriend (Holly Hunter) are falling in love, and so Dreyfuss obviously has mixed feelings about this. He wants his girlfriend to move on, but then Dreyfuss is dead so he really can't move on himself - his feelings are somewhat frozen in time. The original was a wartime film about the war in 1943. There is hardly any such thing as a film made in 1943 that wasn't a war film. Trust me, I've looked. So they have to exorcise that part of the film because it would make no sense in 1989 and instead pump up the schmaltz to fill in the gaps. Except the fact that Dreyfuss' pilot takes risks as a firefighting pilot (what's the hurry? Things are already out of control by definition!) doesn't make as much sense as a pilot who is part of a two front war taking risks in WWII.
It's not an awful film, it just has nothing original to offer, and that is a shame considering the caliber of the cast. Universal released this at Christmas, probably knowing it was a weak film and thinking the holidays would make the sicky sweetness more palatable. In my humble opinion, Universal was wrong.
It's not an awful film, it just has nothing original to offer, and that is a shame considering the caliber of the cast. Universal released this at Christmas, probably knowing it was a weak film and thinking the holidays would make the sicky sweetness more palatable. In my humble opinion, Universal was wrong.