Overboard

Overboard

Starring Anna Faris, Eugenio Derbez, Eva Longoria, John Hannah

Directed by Rob Greenberg

The Story:
Kate (Anna Faris) is a mild-mannered single mother of three daughters who works two jobs just to keep ends meet, while she also studies to become a nurse.  Her life is anything but glamorous, and then she meets glamorous Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez), a Latin playboy who's father is the third richest man in the world.  She is assigned to clean his yacht, but he berates her and insults her looks, and then refuses to pay, throwing her overboard and resulting in her loosing her job.

Then Leonardo falls overboard and suffers amnesia, washing up on the small town Kate is from.  Her friend Theresa (Eva Longoria) comes up with a brilliant plan of revenge - convince Leonardo he is Kate's husband, so he can do all the chores she can't, and get a job so she can focus on studying.

After Leonardo (now named Leo) moves in with Kate, she begins giving him a mounting list of chores and tasks to do, and makes him get a job at a construction company owned by Theresa's husband.  As Leo tackles his new responsibilities, he learns the importance of hard work, being a family man, and even a loving husband, leaving Kate to feel guilty about what she did to him, and worried that one day he'll regain his memories and leave them for good.

The Synopsis:
In 1987, famed director Garry Marshall directed "Overboard" starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell (a real-life couple at the time), where Hawn's character was a snooty, snobby, spoiled rich woman who insults Russell's blue-collar life, before she falls overboard from her yacht and suffers amnesia.  Russell's character convinces her she is his wife, and proceeds to torture her with chores and tasks to make up for how she treated him, leading her to understand the value of hard work and being a mother, leading the two to fall in love.  While it's not one of those memorable comedies, it did fairly well due to Marshall's natural talent for pulling comedy out of anything, and the chemistry between the two leads.

Now, thirty years later, unknown director Rob Greenberg decided to take the film and re-vamp it for a new generation.  In the light of powerful movements like #metoo, the writers intellectually decided to not do a shot-for-shot remake, since it'd probably appear very ugly to have a man basically owning a woman.  However, a woman owning a Latino man?  That's acceptable - I guess. It could've been more forgivable if this comedy - if you'd call it that - was actually funny, or if the two leads had any chemistry, or if the setting made any sense, or if there was any need for this remake at all.  Unfortunately, this wasn't much of a comedy, the leads had no chemistry, the setting made no sense, and there was absolutely no need for this remake.

Watching the film in the theater on opening weekend, I counted a total of twelve other people - not a good sign for an opening weekend film.  What's worse is that, throughout the nearly two-hour run-time (I've said it before, I'll say it again: comedies should only last an hour and a half, tops), I heard maybe two or three chuckles.  Not even laughs, but chuckles.  It was nearly excruciating to sit through, and made me wish I had fallen overboard and suffered amnesia so I wouldn't remember seeing this in the first place.

I guess I'm giving it too much credit for it being so awful, because it really wasn't - it just wasn't memorable at all.  It was like watching the Home Shopping Network for two hours - a total waste of time, but maybe you'd find a nice purse you'd like to buy.  However, what Greenberg was selling here was something I would never buy. 

Anna Faris is a comedic genius, skyrocketing to stardom in her performance in the "Scary Movie" films, and appearing in the critically acclaimed comedy series "Mom."  Casting her as the gender-swapped lead should've been a no-brainer, but it seemed that even she knew how terrible the film was, and she floated through her performance with little to no effort, and even gave several facial expressions that seemed to show she was in some sort of gastric distress throughout (seriously, she looked like she was having a terrible time from start to finish). 

Eugenio Derbez is a well-known actor in his home country of Mexico, and has set out to make a more international name for himself, starring in indie films like "Batteries Not Included" and "How to be a Latin Lover" to mixed success.  Here, in his first "blockbuster" role (I use it in quotations because there's nothing blockbuster about this), he serves as the billionaire playboy philanthropist (wait, that's Iron Man - take away the philanthropist part and it's pretty much Derbez here) who suffers amnesia and is coerced into believing he's the husband of a lower-income family where he's forced to work a backbreaking job and basically serve as Kate's slave.  The writers had enough common sense to make it a male role, but the gaslighting (to manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity) is as rampant as ever.  You actually feel bad for the guy, and he is the only one here who goes through a radical transformation.  That doesn't excuse his lack of performance, especially in his constant manner in which he asks questions ("I'm sterile?"  "I'm poor?"  "I'm married?" "I'm in this film?" All asked with the same inflections).

When the two get together, they're as red-hot as a bucket of ice in the freezer.  You're supposed to believe the two slowly fall in love (despite the fact that, you know, Leo has amnesia), but you don't feel it at all.  It's like two roommates who co-exist, and one roommate literally does everything (she even forces him to sleep in a tool shed). 

The film takes place in the small town of Elk Grove, Oregon (the same setting as the original, and there's even a reference of only one other person suffering from amnesia, a pretty girl in the 80s), and the setting itself does no service to the underlying theme of racial equality thrown in.  Derbez is Mexican, and his character works for a construction company employed by several Mexicans, but the owner is white (stereotype if I've ever heard one).  The entire state of Oregon only has 496,000 Latinos living in it, raking it 19th in states with Latino population, yet you'd be forgiven to think this takes place somewhere more southern.  It's uncomfortable because it plays on the trope of Latinos only being good at manual labor that it serves as another way the film is totally off-putting. 

In an industry that thrives on remaking classic originals, "Overboard" was one of those originals that wasn't classic enough to warrant a remake, nor did anyone ask for it.

The Summary:
When it comes to unnecessary remakes, "Overboard" takes the cake, as the film is nowhere near as funny, smart, or sophisticated as it should've been, wasting the talents of the two leads, and just being a totally unnecessary film from start to finish.

The Score: D-