HOW WOULD YOU LIKE to be given a second chance at life after being prematurely snatched from your earthly body? Well, you can indulge in just such a fantasy (if only for a couple of hours) by going to see the latest Warren Beatty extravaganza, Heaven Can Wait. Of course, you'll have to suspend all reason and logic to make the film's extraordinarily far-fetched plot believable, but if you surrender yourself to the zaniness, you'll probably have a reasonably enjoyable evening of light entertainment.

Heaven Can Wait is supposed to be a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, a vintage '40s film that was based on a play entitled--you guessed it--Heaven Can Wait. The new film's script has been updated and altered a bit. For example, the story's hero has been changed from a prizefighter to a quarterback. Heaven Can Wait is clearly a vehicle for Beatty in more ways than one. He is billed as the co-writer, co-director, and naturally, the star. He apparently wanted to cash in on the success of his last effort, Shampoo, by bringing back two of his co-stars in that film, Julie Christie and Jack Warden.

This delightfully bizarre comedy about life death and love opens as the central character, Joe Pendleton (Beatty), a star quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, looks as though he is about to suffer a tragic death in a tunnel collision between his bicycle and a truck. A novice heavenly escort, (played by Buck Henry) removes Joe's soul from his body just before the smash-up in order to spare Joe the pain. Of course, the escort does not realize that Joe, being an excellent athlete with quick reflexes, would have avoided the crash and lived for another 50 years. Joe protests his early departure to heaven and the mistake is soon discovered by another celestial bureaucrat (played by they oh-so-suave James Mason). Unfortunately, Joe's own body has been cremated, so a new body suitable for him must be found.

They settle temporarily on the body of a southern California corporate hot shot, Leo Farnsworth, who has just been poisoned by his paranoid wife (played by the zaftig Dyan Cannon) and her lover, Farnsworth's eager-to-please private secretary, (Charles Grodin, the lovable shiksachaser who woos and wins Cybil Shepard in The Heartbreak Kid). Farnsworth turns out to be a particularly loathsome tycoon as he alternately comes under attack from both his adulterous wife and scheming secretary and from enviornmental protection groups protesting his multinational's unsafe and exploitative practices.

Joe Farnsworth finds himself quite ill at ease in his new surroundings. He can't get used to the pretensions assumed by the late Farnsworth and forgoes formality as he athietically dashes about the mansion delivering brisk "hiyas" and "how-ya-doin's" to a staff of bewildered servants. Especially amusing is the scene in which Joe exhorts his board of directors to act like a winning football team and give in to consumer demands, forsaking short-term profits for an ultimate "victory."

ONE TRICKY ASPECT of the film is that Joe appears to the audience and his heavenly guardians as his former self, but as Farnsworth (whom we never actually see) to ever body else. This gimmick naturally provides several humorous encounters. The best of these is the scene in which Joe tries to convince his old coach that he is really Pendleton and not Farnsworth, and to let him play in the Super Bowl.

The romance between Joe and an ecologically activist English schoolteacher (Christie) may be the most touching part of the film. Initially a fervent enemy of the ruthlessly capitalist Farnsworth, the girl soon sees the genuine warmth and goodness of Joe beneath the Farnsworth exterior, and, of course, they fall in love.

An important question raised by Heaven Can Wait has to be the future of Beatty's sacting career. He has not made artistic progress in his more recent films, seemingly surrendering to his press image as another pretty-faced glamour boy. The promise of his career as seen in his earlier, more substantial roles, in films like Splendour in the Grass, Bonnie and Clyde, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Parallax View appears undeveloped in his more recent roles as George, the heartily-sexed hairdresser in Shampoo and as Joe Pendleton in this film.

Beatty seems to have become the perpetual adolescent of the film industry--the Mick Jagger of the silver screen. His adamant refusal to grow up and be serious is admittedly rather charmingly contagious and his ebullient, almost Byronic self-absorption displayed in his latest performances is actually an amusing parody of the character type portrayed in Carly Simon's You're So Vain. Beatty was rumored to be the most likely candidate as the real-life model for the song's supremely narcissistic hero. He can't seem to shake off his reputation as an obsessed Casanova, pursuing several women at once while ultimately infatuated with himself. Yet there is something strangely but undeniably likeable about a 40-year-old "naughty boy."

Beatty's off-screen image appears very similar to his on-screen persona. He is most often depicted as the consummate playboy-dilettante, campaigning for some liberal chic political candidate one moment (a la sister Shirley Maclaine), partying with the Aga Khan crowd the next. When will he get down to the business of serious acting? Ah, well, maybe someday we'll see the more mature Beatty--the more intelligent and reflective actor that he could and should be.

Still, despite its obvious frothiness, Heaven Can Wait is a good escapist film, certainly a nice break from yet another wave of shock and disaster movies. While Beatty and company may not deliver Oscar-winning performances, they do provide something we all need a bit of now and then--good, old-fashioned fun.