BEFORE: Anna Faris carries over from "What's Your Number?" And I sincerely hope that yesterday's film represents the low point in the romance chain, where quality and ratings are concerned. It sort of feels like there's nowhere to go from there but up, right? Here's hoping.
Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Tommy Rall links from "Pennies From Heaven" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 22)
6:15 am "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 am "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "The Green Years" (1946) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "The Southerner" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 pm "Three Little Words" (1950) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 pm "Kisses For My President" (1964) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "Baby Doll" (1956) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "How the West Was Won" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
11:00 pm "The Gunfighter" (1950) with _____________ linking to:
12:45 am "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) with _____________ linking to:
3:00 am "Planet of the Apes" (1968) with _____________ linking to:
5:00 am "Kind Lady" (1951)
Ah, my decisions in past Februarys to watch chains featuring Fred Astaire and Howard Keel are still paying off. (Those actors are not among today's links, though.). But I've seen five of today's twelve: "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Witness for the Prosecution", "Three Little Words", "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Planet of the Apes". Linking by actor sure makes for some strange bedfellows, right, TCM? Anyway, I'm up to 87 seen out of 255, or 34.1%.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Overboard" (1987) (Movie #3,143)
THE PLOT: After a spoiled wealthy yacht owner is thrown overboard and loses his memory, a mistreated employee convinces him that he is her working-class husband.
AFTER: I admit I was a little skeptical about remaking "Overboard", the Garry Marshall-directed film from 1987. Despite the fact that we all knew that Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell were together as a couple in real life, the film's seemed a little off, with a working-class man taking advantage of a rich woman with (convenient movie) amnesia, and by tricking her into thinking she was his wife and the mother of three boys. Because at the end of the day, there was kidnapping involved, a type of brainwashing and then when she sort of fell for him, that was still a bit rapey.
But then I found out that the 2018 remake (reboot?) with a similar plot did a whole gender-flip thing, and now the story is about a working-class single MOTHER taking advantage of a rich MAN'S amnesia, and that feels a little...well, better I guess. Down with the patriarchy, right? And let's give a shout-out to the single mothers out there working two minimum-wage jobs while also putting themselves through school... Now, there's still a bit of an issue because the amnesiac man falls for the woman who he believes is his wife, and they end up sleeping together, so there's still that small matter of torture, brainwashing and rape. But you never hear much about women raping men, right? Sometimes you hear about female teachers sleeping with high-school students, but I have to wonder how many of those incidents are never reported, when male students don't want to ruin a good thing...
There's also a heavy Latin flair to this film, which is also in touch with the times - the man who falls off the yacht is the son of a Mexican billionaire, who's never really worked a day in his life, and treats everyone around him like his servants. There's also a heavy Latino population in Elk Grove now, not-so-coincidentally the same Oregon town where the original film was set - so though they share no characters in common, there's a wink at the audience to let them know the two films are set in the same fictional universe.
The amnesiac son, Leonardo, also has a sister who wants to run their father's company - so that explains why his absence from the yacht is not properly investigated, when she finds him in the hospital, she claims that man is not her brother, then uses the opportunity to tell her family that he was eaten by a shark, eliminating the competition to inherit their father's holdings. Meanwhile, Kate Sullivan, the woman who was hired to clean his carpets but was fired without being paid, comes up with a scheme to torture him by making Leonardo think that he's her husband, and he does all the chores around the house and does back-breaking work for a construction company. Well, OK, her friend comes up with the idea, Kate's not really smart enough to think this up on her own. (Why does Anna Faris always play the dumbest character in every movie that she's in? Hmmmm...)
The whole scheme, including the amnesia, feels like something out of a telenovela, which it sort of is. Kate's friend was partially inspired by the story from a Spanish soap opera, so that links rather elegantly back to the Latino culture thing. And there's such a vast discrepancy between Mexican billionaires, like Carlos Slim, and Mexican immigrants doing day-laborer work in the U.S., that chasm is just perfect for a fish-out-of-water comedy like this.
I know, I know, real memory loss doesn't work like it does in the movies. But here at least it's all in the name of comedy, and it's funny to see a rich a-hole taken down a peg and forced to haul bags of concrete mix at a construction site. And it's way too slapstick-y too, with Leonardo trying to cook and ending up spilling spaghetti sauce all over himself, then falling on the floor. But if you can look beyond all that, there's some good stick-it-to-the-man humor in the situation here. But the acting is WAY over the top, the same kind of over-emoting that you expect from a telenovela, and all that just doesn't belong.
Plus the message is still weird - if you want a man that doesn't act like a pig and will agree to do chores around the house, just pick a random one and drop him in the ocean, umm, OK?
Also starring Eugenio Derbez (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Eva Longoria (last seen in "In a World..."), John Hannah (last seen in "The Words"), Swoosie Kurtz (last seen in "Against All Odds"), Mel Rodriguez, Hannah Nordberg, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Payton Lepinski, Fernando Lujan, Cecilia Suarez (last seen in "Spanglish"), Mariana Trevino, Josh Segarra (last seen in "The Music Never Stopped"), Jesus Ochoa (last seen in "Quantum of Solace"), Omar Chaparro, Adrian Uribe, Javier Lacroix (last seen in "The Predator"), Garry Chalk (ditto), Edgar Vivar (last seen in "Bandidas"), Per Graffman, Eric Keenleyside (last seen in "1922").
RATING: 6 out of 10 life-jackets
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Ruta Lee, Norma Varden, Norman Lloyd, Paul Harvey, Arlene Dahl, Eli Wallach, Carroll Baker, Gregory Peck, Karl Malden, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans.
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