The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Thomas Reilly, a businessman recruited by the souls of four deceased people, his guardian angels from childhood, to help them rectify their unfinished lives, as he is the only one who can communicate with them.

In San Francisco, 1959, four despondent strangers embark on the same night trolleybus: Penny, a single mother, regrets working the night shift and leaving her three children at home; Harrison, a would-be singer, has backed out of an important audition due to stage fright; Julia leaves her waitressing job to seek out her boyfriend John, whose marriage proposal she rejected; and small-time thief Milo has just failed to retrieve a book of valuable stamps that he had conned out of a young boy.

The quartet learns that they've been with Thomas all these years because each of them died with unfinished business: Penny never found out what happened to her children, Harrison never conquered his fears and fulfilled his dream of public singing, Julia never told John her true feelings, and Milo never returned the stamp album, which would have freed him of the guilt from his life of crime.

After convincing Hal to buy some more time for them to rectify their unfinished lives, they reappear to Thomas, now a ruthless foreclosure banker who refuses to open up to his devoted girlfriend Anne.

Thomas, who has since undergone psychotherapy to convince himself that his "imaginary friends" were only a childhood delusion, initially believes their reappearance means he has had a psychotic break.

The quartet convince him by leaping in and out of his body during an important meeting and threatening further public humiliation until Thomas reluctantly agrees to help in order to finally be rid of them.

However, after the burglary, a nervous Thomas encounters a police sergeant (who is ticketing his illegally parked car) and accidentally gets himself arrested, forcing Anne to bail him out.

Some of the locations featured in San Francisco include the Stockton Tunnel, The Convervatory of Flowers and the War Memorial Opera House.

The site's consensus states: "A charismatic array of character actors bring a lot of Heart to this supernatural comedy, but many will find that it heaps on the sentimentality where its Soul should be.

"[1] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote: "Heart and Souls breaks the gimmick jinx by blending laughs and tears into a magical fantasy...Downey shows an explosive talent for physical comedy, most memorably at a business meeting when a feminine spirit moves him and at a B.B.

The scene is a show stopper, highlighting a potently acted, buoyantly funny film that trades on emotion without making you gag on it.