WISE Score
Avg. Tomatometer
Shelley Long chokes on a chicken ball and comes back from the dead only to find her suburban life has moved on without her.
5.310%
Unless you are on a quest to watch every single piece of 80s supernatural fluff, you can safely skip this one. It's a 'high concept' movie that never quite reaches its potential, hampered by a script that critics at the time—and audiences since—have found mostly flat.
For a modern kid, the pacing will feel glacial and the jokes about 80s high-society 'zombies' won't land. If you want a supernatural comedy from this era, stick with Beetlejuice.
Best for kids 11 and up who can handle the concept of death being used as a comedic setup. Younger kids will likely be bored by the suburban social-climbing plotlines.
It is a standard 80s fantasy-comedy that deals with death through a lighthearted, wacky lens. While it models some sisterly loyalty, the central conflict involves a fairly shallow social scene and a husband who moves on a bit too quickly.
The premise of a resurrection spell cast by a kooky sister is a classic high-concept 80s trope. However, the execution is fairly grounded in suburban tropes rather than truly inventive world-building.
The inciting incident—choking to death on a chicken ball—is played for laughs but could be unsettling for younger kids. There is some mild 80s-era suggestive humor and language, but nothing egregious.
Beyond a very basic message about second chances and not sweating the small stuff, this is pure popcorn fluff. It doesn't offer much in the way of cognitive or ethical growth.
There was a specific window in the late 1980s where Hollywood was obsessed with the 'what if' comedy. What if a kid turned into an adult (Big)? What if a guy turned into a woman (Switch)? What if a housewife came back from the dead? Hello Again is the result of that last question, and unfortunately, it's one of the weaker entries in the genre.
Shelley Long plays Lucy Chadman, a woman who is essentially 'too nice' for her own good, married to a social-climbing doctor. When she dies and is brought back by her sister's occult dabbling, she discovers that a year has passed and her husband has already remarried. The movie tries to be a comedy of manners, a romance, and a supernatural romp all at once, but it ends up being a bit of a mess.
In 2026, the 'wacky sister' trope feels tired, and the stakes feel remarkably low for a movie about literal resurrection. The film lacks the visual punch or the dark wit of something like Death Becomes Her. While it's not 'bad' in a way that will offend, it's 'bad' in the way that makes you check your phone every ten minutes. It’s a relic of a time when a movie could get greenlit based on a one-sentence pitch and a sitcom star, without much worry about whether the script actually worked.
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