OVERBOARD

Anna Faris     Eugenio Derbez     John Hannah     Eva Longoria     Mel Rodriguez

            This movie is overboard with bad jokes and fairy tale fantasies.  It starts out really irritating with Leonardo (Derbez) being the spoiled rich guy with no comprehension of how most people live.  He is hooping it up on his yacht with playmates and booze, and tries to boss around the maid with a vacuum, Kate (Faris), who is just cheeky enough not to take it, but with serious consequences for her, a mother with three children who is aspiring to become a nurse.

            She is furious and exasperated with him, and when he ends up in a compromised situation involving amnesia, her loyal friends Theresa (Longoria) and Bobby (Rodriguez) suggest an elaborate plan to get revenge and help herself in the process.  What follows is an extended charade involving the whole town where they live.  For those who remember, there was a 1987 film with the same name starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, but in this case, the spoiled one is a male rather than a female.

            This is another one of those senseless remakes of a movie that wasn’t very good in the first place, according to the lackluster reviews (in truth, I did not see it).  This version has the co-star over-acting in the beginning at a hectic pace.  He is much better later on when he tones down (and so is the story), and Anna Faris is good throughout, along with the supporting cast.  With the two main characters, Longoria and Rodriguez and the young actors playing the daughters form a perfect ensemble, with just the right balance of emotionality and plausibility, while still being funny at just the right times.

            Writer Leslie Dixon and writer-directors Bob Fisher and Rob Greenberg seem to have assumed that humor hasn’t changed much since the 1980’s.  And while there was laughter in the screening I viewed, it was slow in coming, and I seriously doubt it is representative of what a larger contemporary audience will appreciate.  It is predictable and retreads well-worn jokes about slipping on a banana peel (um…spaghetti sauce), fooling a narcissistic male, and a pansy having to work hard at physical labor.  Another retro aspect is the miraculous transformation (fairy tale) of one character, unadulterated happiness brought about by family and children, and the portrayal of a successful businesswoman as an overly ambitious, disloyal b----. 

            As I watched this film, I was stunned that such outmoded concepts could still be filmed for the mainstream.  It doesn’t match the cleverness of recent comedic films about redemption, like Baby Driverand The Dressmakerand, actually, a host of movies through the years.

You’re not likely to go overboard in your praise of Overboard.

Grade:  D                          By Donna R. Copeland

HOW TO BE A LATIN LOVER

Eugenio Derbez   Salma Hayek   Rob Lowe   Kristen Bell   Raphael Alejandro

Michael Cera   Rob Corddry   McKenna Grace   Raquel Welch   Linda Lavin

       There are not many films with lovers 25 years apart in age—that is, with the man being younger.  But How to be a Latin Lover has not just one but two such couples.  Maximo (Derbez) walks and talks like he is God’s gift to the world, comfortably ensconced in his wealthy partner’s mansion, with maids running after him serving his every whim and constantly cleaning up his clutter.  He’s been a bit thoughtless in marking his anniversary, so impulsively buys her a sporty car, charging it to her account.  It doesn’t dawn on him that her knees wouldn’t allow her to sit in it, so it turns out to be a car for him.  But…to his shocking amazement, since he thinks she doesn’t notice his lapses, she quickly falls in love with the car salesman (Cera), and he is kicked out of her life.

     Maximo is in his late 40’s and has never worked a day in his life, so what to do?  Suddenly, he’s back in his modest childhood days when he calls on his sister Sara (Hayek), who doesn’t want to see him (they are estranged because he hasn’t bothered to keep in touch or even attend their mother’s funeral), but she grudgingly allows him to stay with her and her son Hugo (Alejandro) in their small apartment temporarily.  Maximo’s years of being indulged and not having any responsibility gets him into one awkward situation after another.  He knows nothing about family life, so devalues his relatives, seeing them only as means to an end, i.e., finding another sugar mama.

     He tries to get help from one of his friends (Lowe), who has a similar arrangement with an older woman (Lavin), but the two men get into a brawl when one betrays the other—another scene that is supposed to be hilarious.

     Most of the story deals with the bizarre premise that Maximo can guide his sister (an attractive widow who hasn’t dated in years) and naïve nephew smitten with his 10 year-old classmate) in the art of seduction.  But this is the one (only) thing in which he is an expert, and in the process of helping others, he finds the value of family.

     Significant mishaps occur along the way, with a script intended to be funny, and indeed, the screening audience did get a big kick out of it.  My own impression is that except for the young-men/old-women twist, not much is novel or particularly funny in this film.  It is the same tired theme of the infantile man somehow achieving his goals without earning them in honorable ways.  His only redemption in my eyes is his realization that he has let his nephew down and then tries to make up for it in a touching, meaningful way.

     How to be a Latin Lover has a good cast, and the director, Ken Marino, has created a particular kind of comedy that makes people in the mainstream laugh, but leaves those of us who want more substance, hungry.  

Hard lessons for a Latin lover to learn

Grade:  C-                                    By Donna R. Copeland