Building on Shirley MacLaine's pioneering work in making belief in reincarnation seem like the exclusive domain of New Age oddballs, Eternity stars Oscar winner Jon Voight as a dashing prince reincarnated as an Evian-swilling do-gooder television producer. First seen galloping about in Ye Olde Time garb and professing to simple gypsy girl Eileen Davidson that he has loved her for many lifetimes and will love her for many more, Voight then awakes many lifetimes later in a shabby bachelor apartment. The cash-strapped host of a morning show covering such housewife-friendly topics as oil drilling, land rights, and reincarnation, Voight finds himself haunted by images of his past life--or alternately, acid flashbacks to some lost period spent in a rundown renaissance fair. Troubled, Voight discusses reincarnation with anyone who will listen, including next-door neighbor, past-life mother, and big-haired spandex enthusiast Kaye Ballard; suit-store owner and past-life jester Joey Villa; and employee, past-life father, and oatmeal shill Wilford Brimley. At a commercial shoot for Villa, Voight discovers that Davidson has been reincarnated as an ambitious actress. Though she initially rebuffs his reincarnation-themed advances, she soon comes to appreciate Voight's fuzzy-headed affability and near-psychotic obsession with past lives. Trouble looms, however, in the form of Armand Assante, Voight's hawkish past-life brother, who has been reincarnated as an evil business mogul with designs on Davidson. While Davidson accepts a job with Assante, hosting a program glorifying a camp that turns juvenile delinquents into dead-eyed, cold-blooded warriors, Voight takes his case to the public, arguing, none too lucidly and in view of news cameras, that Assante is his reincarnated evil warmonger brother. Assante understandably takes umbrage at the accusation, and sues Voight for libel in that last bastion of open discourse, the televised trial presided over by a flamboyant judge and flanked by a string quartet. Though Voight loses the battle to the tune of $2 million, he ends up winning the war, as the public rejects the court's decision and takes to the streets to defend his ideas. Regaining consciousness after a car accident, Voight finds that his friends have gathered at his bedside and chipped in to pay off his debt to Assante, in a finale that suggests Voight may also be a reincarnation of the similarly fortunate protagonist of It's A Wonderful Life.
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