By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Rob Greenberg
Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris, Eva Longoria, John Hannah, Swoosie Kurtz, Mariana Treviño, Cecilia Suárez, Omar Chaparro, Jesús Ochoa, Adrián Uribe, Mel Rodríguez, Alyvia Alyn Lyn, Hannah Nordberg, Cynthia Méndez, Garry Chalk and Fernando Luján.
Rating: Poor.
Rob Greenberg, makes his Feature Film Directorial debut with “Overboard”, a remake of the 1987 film directed by Garry Marshall that brings disastrous results.
The movie tells the story of Kate (Ana Faris) a hard working mother of three girls who works at a pizza restaurant and as a carpet cleaner, who wants to work as a nurse.
One day she is hired by Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez) a selfish, spoiled and wealthy Mexican playboy who treats her really bad and refuses to pay her.
Later Leonardo will suffer an accident by falling of his boat and wakes up in the hospital with no memory. When Kate finds out she will see this is an opportunity to get even and will convince the doctors that Leonardo is his husband.
Now both Leonardo and Kate will have the chance to know each other which could lead to a high potential relationship.
“Overboard” is a comedy that I consider predictable and I found it a complete carbon copy of the Garry Marshall film.
The only change that I see is in the main characters but that is pretty much it. The screenplay written by Bob Fisher and Rob Greenberg was completely empty and the characters honestly they were not even funny.
Both Eugenio Derbez and Anna Faris are incredibly talented and they have great timing in comedy but I didn´t see it here. The chemistry of them in this film never worked and they are light years away from Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell who were very good in the original movie.
The 1987 film was sweet and touchy but it was not a good movie but I can see that it is superior than this version.
When I heard a couple of years back that they were going to do a remake on “Overboard” I feared for the worst and I was not wrong. This movie proves my point and yes, there are moments the film is funny but just a few.
If you saw previously the original film you might anticipate what is going to happen. If you haven´t you might like it and it´s totally fine.
Me personally I was not a fan of this film and I think that it should have never been made in the first place.
Again the 1987 version is a fun and entertaining movie, this one lacked of that and I feel that the dialogue between the characters was too much on the nose.
One other thing that I noticed when I saw this version is that all of the characters have the tendency to over explain things that we already know in the film and honestly it never worked.
The ending is one of the worst I have seen in a film and for a movie of this genre the audience needs to have a connection with the characters and I didn´t see it here.
Hopefully this can be a learning lesson for director Rob Greenberg and he can do a better job in his next project. I do believe that he is a director that can bring good things on the table since he has worked in Comedy Shows like “Frasier” and “Scrubs” and he does have a good timing for comedy but this was not the case.
That being said “Overboard” is one of the worst comedies of this year and I cannot recommend it for the elements that I previously mentioned.