[star rating=”1″] OVERBOARD. Directed by Rob Greenberg, with Anna Faris, Eugenio Derbez and Eva Longoria
MEGAN FURNISS reviews
I kept wishing I had been pushed overboard. Anything, including struggling for my life in shark infested waters, would have been better than sitting through this utterly unredeemable, completely unfunny, totally ludicrous, shambles of a movie.
I have a theory, and it is less unlikely than the premise of the movie so I am going to stick with it. Here is my theory. Director Rob Greenberg got into some trouble and owed favours to some bad guys and he promised to launder money through this movie that he knew would be a complete failure and thereby punish them. He looked around and asked his friends for a script. A bomb. They, suffering from a lack of energy and commitment thought about a remake, and came up with a movie that was pretty awful, sexist, weak and implausible to begin with; the original Overboard starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russel.
Then, to extend the punishment further, they thought, let’s get Goldie Hawn wannabe, Anna Faris, to play the lead. In my theory they probably had a bad experience with her on one of her vile sitcoms. Then, they probably found out that there was a connection to some Mexicans and they realised that if they centred the story around every Mexican stereotype, including the telenovela, labourers, and Eva Longoria, they could add insult to injury.
This theory is the only explanation for the existence of this unrelenting drivel in our universe.
The plot; a spoilt brat of a filthy rich Mexican, Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez) falls off his massive boat (worst split scene in history where he is drunk, looking for condoms and dancing on the deck while the Norwegian captain is dancing to Norwegian pop in front of the screens) after treating the carpet cleaning lady like dirt, is washed up on a beach, has amnesia and is tricked by the carpet cleaning, pizza delivering, wannabe nurse, single mother Kate (Anna Faris) into believing their tacky squalor half belongs to him. Naturally, he becomes the perfect house husband, blah blah blah.
The performances are beyond atrocious. Anna Faris does her best at Goldie Hawn eyes and fails, partly because she has the charm of a soup ladle, and partly because there is not a single truthful or meaningful moment in her entire performance. Eugenio Derbez’ character goes from vile to shlock with a change of voice; shouty bastard to simpering wimp. Eva Longoria must have thought privately what hell this was. At least her part was so tiny she couldn’t mess it up further than the pathetic script would allow.
For a comedy there was not one single funny moment. I did not laugh once or even crack a smile. I had to think long and hard before I found something good to say and came up with nothing.
I urge you to give this movie the widest berth possible.
What: Overboard (Remake 2018)
Overboard 2018 release date SA: 1 June 2018
WS
