Moonstruck

*imdb.com

I’ve decided I should’ve started this blog when I could actually afford to go to movies. But since I didn’t, and now I can’t, it might take me a while to review them. Maybe even a few decades.

This particular movie I had never been interested in seeing (since I was only a kid when it came out), but was on a list in the newspaper of movies to watch on Valentine’s Day. Movies that wouldn’t end with your man whimpering on the sofa (and NOT because he’s so touched by the storyline of “The Notebook”).

So for our budget-friendly V-Day, we ate our candlelit gourmet meal at home and moved to the sofa to watch “Moonstruck”.

Well, for one thing, this movie stars Cher. Have you heard her speak? Yeah, neither have I. Still. That should be enough said. It also stars a very young and scrawny Nicholas Cage. With his own hair. Still. The paper described it as an Italian version of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. Now, I love Italians and all, but I think the Greeks did this one better.

Cher plays Loretta, a middle-aged widow who gets engaged to a guy she doesn’t love so she can do it right – in a church, unlike the first time. Her fiancé asks her to convince his estranged brother, Ronny (Cage), to attend the wedding, and in their arguing about his going or not going, Ronny and Loretta sleep together. (So much for doing it right!) In the night when they wake up together, they see an abnormally large moon in the sky. I guess it struck them... or something.

What should have struck them is how morally wrong the whole premise of this movie is. Girl meets boy, boy loves girl, girl sleeps with boy’s brother, boy’s brother steps out with girl. Girl’s mom loves girl’s dad, girl’s dad steps out with someone not the girl’s mom… and supposedly romance and hilarity ensue. I didn’t really see either. I guess I just have a hard time finding “romance” in immorality.

Eventually it all comes out in the open, and it also all works out in the end. I guess the only reasons to see this movie are to catch a glimpse of a young Nicholas Cage play a boy disgruntled over ‘losing his hand and his girl’, see Frasier’s ‘dad’ as a womanizing college professor, and hear Olympia Dukakis’ (Rose) Oscar winning line. … But wait, even that takes the Lord’s name in vain. Tell you what. I’ll save you the time and give you the edited version.

Rose: Do you love him, Loretta?
Loretta: Aw, ma, I love him awful.
Rose: Oh, that's too bad.