Back in the 1980s, I was actually a fan of Shelley Long. She was a terrific co-lead on Cheers and her pairing with Bette Midler in the comedy Outrageous Fortune was pure magic. I even found her appealing opposite Tom Hanks in the severely flawed The Money Pit. Alas, when she chose to headline comedies on her own, the results were disastrous starting with this labored effort.

Long is cast as ditzy suburban housewife Lucy Chapman, married to doctor Corbin Bernsen and best friends with well-to-do Sela Ward. When Lucy tragically chokes to death, her medium sister Judith Ivey brings her back to life on the one year anniversary of her death and chaos ensues.

Where to begin! First, perhaps a dark comedy could get away with opening with the tragic death of the lead character, but Hello Again is not a dark comedy. In fact, it is a pretty lackluster comedy in its best moments. Writer Susan Isaacs and director Frank Perry have done far better elsewhere (Compromising Positions jumps immediately to mind),so it is shocking how bad this film actually becomes.

Even within the parameters of a slight comedy, the bizarre nature of the story and the completely incomprehensible actions of those involved strain credulity. A woman returning from the dead one year later should be a monumental moment, but Lucy's relations and acquaintances treat it is a mild curiosity or an annoyance. Huh? When her sister brings her back, Lucy materializes in her funeral attire in a cemetery. She refuses to believe her sister and rambles on about nonsensical foolishness, never bothering to question how she ended up there. The scene where she returns home and discovers that Bernsen has married Ward is badly staged and goes on forever. And making Lucy a klutz to get cheap laughs is an easy out that becomes tiresome quickly.

It would have been nice to be surprised by Bernsen and Ward being married, but Long and Bernsen demonstrated no chemistry at all. Really, you do not understand from frame one why these people are married. And seriously, Bernsen and Ward could not even wait a year to get married?

With Bernsen obviously not a romantic interest here, the plot haphazardly shoes in Gabriel Byrne as the emergency room doctor who tried to save Long and then becomes involved with her later. Ivey conveys midway through that Long can only remain on earth if she finds her soul mate. Why? How does she know this? The revelation is thrown out of left field, so naturally we know that Byrne will be the one. Sadly, Long has as much chemistry with him as with Bernsen.

The cast is filled with familiar faces, all of who have had better days elsewhere. Ward is on auto-pilot playing a woman that seems a decent friend but then has to be turned into a cardboard villain...just because. Bernsen is dreadful demonstrating the sex appeal and energy of a rock on Prozac. Byrne looks like he would rather be elsewhere. Even normally reliable performers like Ivey and Carrie Nye are hard put to do anything with the ragged material.

The whole ghastly ordeal ends with a dinner party that has Long trying to trip up Ward with one of the most transparently fake conceits imaginable, snagging her dull soul mate, and then presenting one of the most lackluster cake gets dumped on nasty party guests sequences ever committed to film. If you are a Long fan, you would do well to seek out repeats of Cheers instead.

Lucy Chadman (Shelley Long) is a former-teacher Long Island housewife uncomfortable with the high class parties required by her ambitious Manhattan surgeon Jason (Corbin Bernsen) looking to be chief of plastic surgery at the Knickerbocker. Her gold-digging college friend Kim Lacey (Sela Ward) is three-times-married and looking for a fourth. Her son Danny is a passionate chef. Her sister Zelda (Judith Ivey) is an odd character dabbling in witchcraft. Lucy chokes to death on a South Korean chicken ball from Zelda. Exactly one year later, Zelda uses a spellbook to bring back Lucy. She finds the world has changed. Danny didn't go to Columbia and instead, opened his own restaurant. Jason married Kim and sold the house. She returns to the Knickerbocker ER to talk to Dr. Kevin Scanlon (Gabriel Byrne) who treated her a year ago. Unbeknownst to her, she needs to find true love by the next full moon.

This is not that funny. Shelley Long's pratfalls are awkward and unfunny. The first half of the story is good. The romance takes a long time to start. Gabriel Byrne doesn't show up until the end of the first act and even later for him to fully be a character. The second half of the story is clunky after the world discovers her return from the dead. This is simply not funny enough and I put most of that on writer Susan Isaacs. Director Frank Perry does a workmanlike job but his comedic takes are not laugh worthy either. The romance is fine and I kinda like the wacky sister.

Unless you're the mean ogre all of your neighbors avoid, I don't see anything wrong with admitting you like this movie. I'm glad to see more favorable reviews here than negative ones. I have seen it half a dozen times over the past 24 years, and it always brings me a lot of smiles, where repeat viewings of other more successful films of this era bring on groans. This is equivalent to the "Topper" films of the 30's (and even more so the very enjoyable "Turnabout") so there's nothing rocket science about this movie's storyline. Shelley Long either is praised or condemned, and to paraphrase Shakespeare, I come here to praise her for her likable performance in this rare later day screwball comedy.

Judith Ivey may not seem to be perfect casting as her sister, but not all sisters look like Marcia, Jan and Cindy (to name the sisters from a later Shelley Long character). Long plays a lot more likable character here than she did in the same year's "Outrageous Fortune" (where she was basically playing Diane Chambers),and while she's not Carole Lombard, she's not Pia Zadora either. Some wonderful character actors like Austin Pendleton, Carrie Nye, and John Cunningham add color. I was delighted to see Nye playing a very colorful snob with a bit of Tallulah Bankhead thrown in. Could anybody in such a bit part steal every scene she was in? Those who remember her deliciously campy performances in two roles on "Guiding Light" will adore her here, as will those who only know the veteran stage actress as the sister who ends up a birthday cake in "Creepshow".

Nice movies don't seem to be the more popular ones in retrospective, but when you look at some of the teen comedies of the era, it's almost GB Shaw or Noel Coward in comparison.