Overboard (2018)

★★½
Against all odds, this 2018 remake of 1987’s Overboard rises above the current wave of remakes and reboots despite swapping the male/female roles of the original. Instead of Kurt Russell’s sweaty carpenter we get Anna Farris’s pizza delivery woman slash carpet cleaner slash aspiring nurse. Instead of Goldie Hawn’s spoiled rich girl we get Eugenio Derbez’s womanizing party animal (and spoiled rich boy) Leonardo Montenegro, with the yacht imported over since falling overboard is one of the common threads uniting the two movies. It works because, among other reasons, instead of simply dumping opposite-sex actors into familiar roles, the movie plays to their strengths and anticipates our expectations. When Derbez’s character finds himself on a construction job, his coworkers notice his soft hands. He’s never worked a day in his life.

Farris stars as Kate Sullivan, a single mother raising three daughters while juggling multiple tasks. She has a strong network of friends and supporters, but her mother exits early, choosing to pursue her acting ambitions while she still can. This leaves Kate alone, trying to improve her situation but finding little time to do it. She accepts a job on Leonardo’s yacht to clean the bedroom and bathroom, where she acknowledges that the toilet is worth more than what she makes in a year. He spurns her requests for payment and pushes her overboard. Later that night, he falls into the water and washes ashore, unable to remember his past.

After hearing the news, Kate’s friend Theresa (Eva Longoria) convinces her to pose as Leonardo’s wife to get him out of the hospital and put him to work in her house and get payback for how he mistreated her. The plan works, and soon enough Leo is doing the cooking, cleaning and running errands at the store. This allows Kate to study for her nursing degree. Meanwhile, Leo gets a job constructing a swimming pool, giving him a taste of the working man’s life. The first day goes as planned and ends in hilarious fashion, as Leo, who has no memory of their life together, is eager to consummate the sham marriage. Kate reminds him that, as a recovering alcoholic who relapsed and wound up on the beach, he must carry out his ”self-imposed” punishment by sleeping in the shed.

Many of the original’s key scenes are here, such as how the kids warm up to him and he regards them as his own, how Kate starts to feel guilt and struggles to reveal the truth, how the best friend intervenes at the last minute to ensure the ruse keeps going, and especially how Leo’s family tracks him down. He’s the heir to his father’s construction company empire, but his conniving sister Magdalena (Cecilia Suárez) wants the company for herself. In fact, she’s the one who left him at the hospital in the first place rather than claim him when she had the chance. Her father Papi (Fernando Luján) and sympathetic sister Sofia (Mariana Treviño), though, want to find him.

When the movie works, it really works. First and foremost among the pros is the chemistry between Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez, and not just romantic chemistry but the comedic variety as well. When they become comfortable with each other late in the story they’re a lot of fun to watch, but even before that when they’re just stumbling around trying to get used to the situation, they make an amusing pair. Anna Farris is especially good here. When she deviously gets Leo to do her bidding, she projects the right amount of cunning that makes her believable while not forgetting that this is a light-hearted comedy. Outside of the Scary Movie franchise, Farris has had the opportunity to expand her range in quirky films like May and Smiley Face, so she has the tools necessary to ensure her character is likable despite committing what is admittedly a horrible deception. I’m not familiar with Eugenio Derbez’s work, but he makes a good impression all the same.

The movie is far from perfect, and stumbles badly on two occasions—the close call when Leo suspects Kate is hiding something and when Leo’s family finally arrives. Both scenes play out similarly to the original scenes, but they feel rushed. Leo finds condoms that he suspects are Kate’s (they’re his), and she hastily comes clean, only for Theresa to salvage the situation. It doesn’t play out as smoothly as the first time we saw this between Goldie and Kurt. A little more care should have gone into staging this. Ditto for when Leo’s family shows up. Leo’s memory returns upon seeing his father and sisters. He goes through the same routine first laid out by Goldie Hawn, but again it seems like everyone is just recreating the action rather than putting something unique about their characters here. Indeed, there is nearly an identical angle from above showing Leo looking around the house, seeing the improvements he made but rejecting it all as part of a lie. For a movie that seems confident about creating its own identity, it curiously retreats and stops momentum when it should be rolling along. I appreciated a quick shot of Anna Farris wearing a jean jacket and her blonde hair made up to resemble Hawn. These subtle touches are the way to remind us of the original without copying whole scenes.

Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often. Overboard is the kind of remake that doesn’t drag in any extra baggage, since the original, while having devoted fans, did its job and went along its merry way, resurfacing on cable television when its turn came up. There’s less risk of backlash when remaking movies like this, or Can’t Buy Me Love, or Just One of the Guys. The opportunity to play around with the source material and try new things should be explored, otherwise there’s no reason to remake at all. Sometimes they work (She’s the Man) while others fail spectacularly (Love Don’t Cost a Thing). At least the bar is set low. Overboard mostly stays above the bar.

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