Overboard
ANDY’S RATING: ★★★ In cinemas on Friday
IF you had to find someone to step into Goldie Hawn’s shoes for a remake of a much-loved 1987 rom-com, kooky Anna Faris would feature pretty near the top of your list. Surprisingly, it isn’t Goldie’s slingbacks she is squeezing into. In this Latin-infused redo she has been tasked with putting on the battered slip-ons of Kurt Russell’s struggling single parent.
The horrible millionaire is now played by Mexico’s biggest star Eugenio Derbez, who delivers a good percentage of his lines in subtitled Spanish.
Faris is a pizza delivery woman, carpet cleaner, trainee nurse and mum-of-three who clashes with the spoilt rich kid when tasked to mop his yacht after a raucous night in with a gaggle of models.
When Leonardo (Derbez) goes overboard and suffers amnesia shortly after getting Kate (Faris) fired, she hits on a way to pay him back.
She’ll trick “Leo” into thinking he’s her husband, get him a back-breaking job with less well-heeled Mexicans at a building site, and force him to run the house while she studies for an exam.
The gender switch and Mexican angle did freshen it up. I just wish the jokes had been a little funnier and that Faris and Derbez had a fraction of the chemistry of the still-married Russell and Hawn.