Checked out the remake of the Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russel romantic comedy from the 80s Overboard. That was the one where Hawn, a rich spoiled heiress, falls off her yacht and gets amnesia. Poor working man Russel convinces her that she’s his wife in order to put little miss rich girl in her place. I saw that movie in the 80s and really didn’t like it but a funny thing has happened over the years… people who did see it – many much younger than I was at the time – seemed to like it. But now its a bit of a hot potato due to its themes of preying on women. The question is, can a remake work, does it need to exist, and can it be any good?
Well, in order to make the remake work, they swap the genders so its not creepy at all! (hah!) Anna Farris plays the working class girl who is hired to clean the carpets of a rich man’s yacht. He treats her badly, falls into the ocean, gets amnesia, and Farris convinces him that he’s her husband (and the adopted father of her three daughters). She puts him to work, manual labor, cooking, cleaning, so she has time to study for her nursing exam. It’s still creepy, unethical, and wrong regardless of gender… but the weird thing is, in order to reach a more international target, they brought on Mexican movie star Eugenio Derbez to play the rich guy… so they swapped genders and made the Mexican actor the virtual slave of the blonde American? Hmmm….
But, to be fair, a lot of this movie is in Spanish so dropping Derbez into the pic isn’t just stunt casting or misplaced representation. He and his rich family are an important part of the plot and there’s a lot of other Spanish speakers besides (Hi Eva Longoria!) with a lot of subtitled dialog. You could argue they’ve made the story even more problematic but the film does touch upon issues of working class joes getting a raw deal, and that includes immigrants. Not that it’s a super messagey movie…
Anyhow, the next question is, should it exist? I dunno. It does. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a remake of a bad movie so why not? If you loved the original, maybe you won’t give this one a fair shake.
Because the funny thing happened while I sat there cynically watching a remake of a bad movie… I started to laugh. Not a lot but enough. And then, when the movie moves into the “he’s bonding with his fake family and she’s realizing he’s a decent guy” phase of the story, it got legitimately sweet and cute. I started to find it a nice cushion of adorable… helped by Anna Farris just being herself, the three little girls playing her daughters, as well Derbez who is funny and kind of charming.
Color me shocked. I did not see this coming at all. This is a good romantic comedy. Super predictable and certainly problematic in all sorts of human rights sorts of ways… but if you can ignore that, there’s something enjoyable here. Especially if you’re the kind of person who just loves dopey silly cute romantic comedies.
Score: 81