Overboard

1987 crime drama

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A carpenter decides that two wrongs can indeed make a right and kidnaps a rich amnesiac lady, forces her to do chores around the house, and eventually has sex with her after convincing her that they're married. That's the sort of thing that was funny in the late-80s.

And I'm glad about two things as a 45-year-old man watching the original Overboard:

1) That I am not so old that I can no longer appreciate the posterior of Goldie Hawn. If I reach that point, I have given instructions for my family to euthanize me.

2) That I've grown enough since I first saw this as a middle schooler in a theater with my brother to understand how reprehensible most of what this movie passes off as comedy really is.

None of these characters--and I'm including the trio of obnoxious children, one who speaks in a funny voice because that also passed as comedy back in the late-80s--deserve a happy ending. But it's a 1987 comedy, so they all get a happy ending. Not only do they get a happy ending--no, they get themselves an ultra-happy ending. Because you can't just get by being with the man or woman you love because the script tells you to love him or her or having a family that was pieced together using trickery and some light kidnapping, enslavement, and rape. No, you also need to end up filthy rich. It's the exact problem that Crispin Glover claims he had with the Back to the Future ending. Here, it's arguably more sickening because these are all terrible human beings, and you just know that the money is going to make them even more terrible.

One wonders what will happen with Mike Hagerty's character. His mulleted friend suddenly being hoisted into a higher echelon of human being--because everybody knows that money makes you better--is probably going to leave him alone and, you have to assume, suicidal. You don't need a wing-man when you've got nothing to do but sit on a boat and admire Goldie Hawn's buttocks, right?

I haven't seen the sequel to this and probably won't, but I assume it's a cinematic act of revenge.