Movie Review: Overboard

Have you ever seen the movie Overboard?

Spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen this 1987 movie by now, you should just go ahead and read this post.

Overboard is your standard 80’s romantic comedy. Boy meets girl. Girl is mean to boy. Boy is mean to girl. Girl gets kidnapped by boy. Boy tricks her. Girl realizes trick. Girl runs away. Boy chases girl. Girl comes back. Boy is happy. Girl is rich. Boy is even happier.

The plot of this movie is simple.  Dean Proffitt (played by Kurt Russell) tricks Joanna Slayton (Goldie Hawn) into thinking she is wife after she has a case of amnesia. He kidnaps her because she threw him and his tools overboard her huge yacht. He wanted revenge.

The next day he sees a story about a random women found off the coast of Oregon with a case of amnesia.  It was her.  This is Proffitt’s perfect time to strike.  He goes out of his way to go to the hospital and trick the doctors into thinking she is his wife.  He brings her home and tells her she lives there and that she’ll have to clean and cook for his sons.  The house is a pig sty. She registers her doubts that she ever lived like this, but old Dean does his best at convincing her that this is her life.

Did Proffitt ever think about the emotional effect that kidnapping a women and tricking her into being a mom would have had on his four sons. What kind of lessons is he teaching here? “Well boys, as long as she owes you money you can do what you want. Whoa. His little accomplices had to change and adapt their life to accommodate for their new slave-mom.  Hey boys, this lady has lost her memory. I’m going to trick her into thinking that she is your mom and that we’ve been married for 13 years. “Dad, why are you doing this, what did she ever do to you?” one of the boys should have asked.  Proffitt would have answered, “Well son, she didn’t pay me for the sub-par work I did, then when she thought I was going to attack her, she threw me and my toolbox overboard”.  This rational conversation never took place.  Dean Proffitt forces her to sleep on a dirty couch under a leaky roof, cook, clean, and do motherly things. At first, she is obviously bad at everything, but over the span of her involuntary lockup, she gradually gets better. I won’t bore you with details that you already know, but she eventually regains her memory and realizes that Dean Proffitt is not her actual husband, the boys are not hers, she doesn’t live in Oregon, and that she is married to someone else.

 

Her slimy husband eventually returns to rescue her. She leaves her captor and goes back to a life of luxury, only to quickly realize that she actually loves that old beer drinking lug.  Comedy ensues when US Coast Guard gets involved.  The happy couple is eventually reunited. She tells her new family that it’s not her husband who is rich, it’s her.  All of Dean Proffitt’s wishes came true. He opened the mini-golf course he always dreamed of and his boys got the mom they always wanted.  

If this weren’t a romantic comedy, Dean Proffitt surely would have gone to jail for 25-to-life for reckless endangerment, kidnapping, and enslavement.  Goldie Hawn’s character had a clear case of Stockholm Syndrome.

All of this being said, I love this movie. Kurt Russell is a rock star of an actor. Probably one of God’s great gifts to the acting world. I basically love anything that he’s in.  I’m not the biggest Goldie Hawn fan, however, she has a pretty sweet name. Goldie seems like the name of some Scotty Dog. Or an 80’s villain.