Overboard? No, just very bored...
This oddly cast remake of the Goldie Hawn comedy classic is not so much Overboard as totally...
Overboard C ert: 12A 1hr 52mins ★★★★★
Overboard is a comedy about a thoroughly spoiled and hugely wealthy yacht-owner who falls off their boat one night, wakes up in hospital with amnesia and is then picked up by someone claiming to be their spouse but who is actually intent on both revenge and teaching a few important life-lessons along the way. Sound familiar?
Well, it should as it’s a remake of the 1987 film of the same name that starred Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. It’s generally considered to be amusing, wellworked, classy fun. The 2018 remake? Not so much.
For its new outing, it has been given a 21st-century makeover. The gender roles have been reversed and a strong Hispanic theme introduced that may play well in California but will surely leave some audiences here wondering if it was made with them in mind at all. I suspect not.
Hawn played the yacht-owner first time round, but here it’s Mexican Eugenio Derbez, who takes on the role, as Leonardo, of an obnoxious playboy living off the wealth of his construction magnate father. His is a world of champagne, hot tubs and obliging models, and he’s used to getting his own way.
So when Kate (Anna Faris), a hard-working widowed mother of three girls, not only expects to be paid for her carpet-cleaning services but has the feistiness to answer back… he throws her into the sea along with her expensive equipment.
Poor Kate, already working three jobs, studying to become a nurse and facing eviction, is now thousands of dollars in debt too. Until a drunken Leonardo falls overboard, wakes up with amnesia etc, and guess who sees an opportunity for revenge?
Actually, it’s not Kate but her best friend, Theresa (a rather wasted Eva Longoria), but you get the general life-swapping idea. Suddenly, Leo discovers he’s an impoverished construction worker and fatherof-three who’s infertile (Kate has to explain why her blonde daughters don’t look like their ‘father’) and, oh, a recovering alcoholic too.
Directed by Rob Greenberg, an experienced TV hand but here making his feature debut, the remake gets off to an awkward start, partly because large chunks play out in subtitled Spanish, and partly because Hawn lookalike Faris isn’t really leading lady material, but largely because the little-known Derbez is such strange casting for the role of Leonardo. I mean, he’s 55, for goodness’ sake, and looks it… which is a bit old to be playing a playboy, especially in a romantic comedy. Russell, for the record, was 36 when the original was released. Faris is a relatively youthfullooking 41. Every now and then the film threatens to haul itself back to threestar respectability. The original is nicely acknowledged – ‘we haven’t had a case of amnesia since a pretty young woman back in the Eighties’, the local police chief pronounces – Derbez improves with screen time and Faris does raise a chuckle or two. The contrast between the Mexican haves (Leonardo’s wealthy family) and the Mexican have-nots (his fellow construction workers) is reasonably nicely established too. But it’s never enough, as we head far too slowly towards redemption, with modern communication – ie, the internet – damaging the credibility of the plot, and modern morality, at times, limiting our ability to accept it. Would a protective mother leave her daughters with a man she barely knows… even if she is starting to like him?
A pivotal packet of condoms does slightly spoil what might have been the family fun. There’s also something faintly depressing about a film – even a romcom – that pays generous lip service to the idea that there is dignity in hard work and poverty before coming to the enthusiastic conclusion that it’s much better being rich.
Truly a tale for our times.