Overboard (1987)

Directed by Garry Marshall. Starring Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Edward Herrmann, Michael G. Hagerty, Jared Rushton, Brian Price, Jamie Wild, Jeffrey Wiseman, Roddy McDowall, Katherine Helmond, Henry Alan Miller, Doris Hess. [PG]

A spoiled, bitchy heiress (Hawn) falls out of her yacht and gets amnesia, so the blue-collar slob (Russell) she mistreated the day before decides to get revenge: pick her up from the hospital, insist that she’s his wife and mother to his four kids, and make her do household chores for a couple of months. Featherweight formula fare beyond its tasteless and absolutely absurd premise—do institutions tend to release patients to strangers without proper documentation?—so if you can get past that glaring issue, it’s an agreeable if bland throwback to romantic screwball farces. The stars never quite elevate the material, although they’re not as uncouth as they could have been when their characters’ behavior is at its worst; Edward Herrmann, as Hawn’s snooty and selfish husband, is stuck with an obnoxious caricature. “Garry Marshall turns Lina Wertmüller into commercial pudding” might be the best way to describe it. Remade several times in different countries/languages, plus an American gender-swapped redo in 2018. Héctor Elizondo cameos.

51/100