Movie Review of "Overboard"

Starting with the basic information about the movie Overboard is a remake of the 1987 Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell comedy, with the main roles gender-swapped. It's all based on lies and other horrible behavior, and, in the remake, there are no laughs, no fun, and no romantic chemistry to redeem the rocky premise. The main message of the movie is that money is the key to happiness. There are several scenes in the movie in which the leading man "parties" with several bikini-clad women, and having almost sex.

Storyline

 

In OVERBOARD, Kate (Anna Faris) is a struggling single mom with three daughters and two jobs: delivering pizza and cleaning carpets. She's also studying for a nurse's exam and needs a break. Hired to clean the carpets on a huge yacht that belongs to the selfish, unpleasant billionaire Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez), Kate refuses to bring him a snack and is fired without pay. He also throws her equipment in the ocean. Later, drunk, Leonardo falls overboard and loses his memory. Kate decides to get her revenge by pretending that he's her husband, taking him home, and making him get a manual labor job and do chores around the house. Eventually, "Leo" settles into his position and learns to like his new life, even growing to love the girls and Kate. But what will happen when his memory returns and he realizes it's all a ruse?

Last Words

Lazy, stupid, and unfunny, this gender-swapped remake of the 1980s screwball comedy seems to have been made without anyone caring at all. Worse, it manages to be insulting to both the characters and the audience. Garry Marshall's 1987 movie at least gave Goldie Hawn a funny role to play as nasty socialite Joanna; this Overboard unwisely switches the roles, making the usually hilarious Faris the put-upon working-class character and sapping her role of the potential for fun. Now she's basically unpleasantly frenzied not to mention highly unappealing because of her ongoing, extremely mean-spirited lies. Derbez, a huge star in Mexico looking to make his breakthrough in the United States, is all pratfalls and frantic energy, and his "transformation" into a nice guy is extremely difficult to buy, as is the forced chemistry between him and Faris. It's embarrassing to think that cross-cultural audiences will be exposed to the worst of both countries in this awful movie. No one comes out looking good here, on either side of the camera. In one scene, the family watches their grandmother (Swoosie Kurtz) performing onstage in The Mikado, and one of the daughters' comments "This is horrifying." That completely apt description applies to Overboard in its entirety.