New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

“Okay I see your point,” she said – and she was laughing. “But it’s a love story!”

I replied, and only half jokingly: “Yes, and it’s also the story of two highly disturbed men who use a cruel but functionally innocent woman as a sexual and emotional pawn. She clearly suffered some mental trauma from this, and in the end (26-year-old spoiler alert) she reveals to Russell that the yacht and all the money is actually hers, so now Russell’s character isn’t just a rapist, he’s a rich rapist!”

Look, I know it was the ‘80s – the decade that made lowbrow racial humor, sexual harassment and Jamie Lee Curtis’s boobs a way of life, but when I imagine this story being pitched today I see a room full of studio executives wrinkling their faces and saying:

“Ewww…really?”

But let’s get back to my shame. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d never looked at Overboard that way, and the woman who’d just hours before gone on a rant against Howard Stern’s adolescent misogyny suddenly realized that one of her most super duper favorite movies of all time was little more than a classically elaborate, male dominated rape fantasy. Now, she looks at me with an almost scientific combination of amusement and pity, and says:

“You really can’t turn it off, can you?”

Yes, I got called out and it was okay. It’s what I do. All you have to do is change a handful of key scenes, maybe dye Goldie’s hair black – and you’ve got a Hitchcock film. I’d be more worried about people who watch this movie and don’t see a psycho rapist.

“No.” I confessed - and with a more than appropriate level of sincerity. “No, I guess can’t.”

So there you have it. I’m not lying when I say that in a not insignificant way, I really did ruin this movie a little bit for her. But that just goes to show you, we should have just watched Wrath of Khan, as should we all, when the only other option is a romantic comedy. And here’s a funny aside – Who’s that Girl is her absolute favorite movie ever (I know, right?) and I have already been warned that if I ruin that one for her, they might never find my body.

The needs of the Missus outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. Got it.

Continued:       1       2       3