Hollywood isn’t just churning out crummy remakes of great films anymore — now it’s doing awful remakes of mediocre films.
For evidence, see “Overboard.” Or, rather, don’t.
Who needs an updated version of that bizarre Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell comedy in which a rich woman tumbles off her yacht, wakes up with amnesia and is kidnapped by a man with a mullet? Nobody.
But we got one anyway, starring the much less appealing duo of Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez. It really sinks.
The biggest change from the 1987 original is that the genders are flipped.
Instead of Russell’s brutish contractor, the kidnapper here is a single mom (Faris), who delivers pizzas when she’s not in nursing school. Rather than Hawn’s caviar-scarfing socialite, the victim is a spoiled heir (Derbez) of a billionaire. After he plummets from his boat, Faris tricks this amnesiac into thinking she’s his wife.
The filmmakers here clearly think that their gender swap is a heroic act of progressivism. But when it comes to being a detestable character, like Faris’ Kate, gender doesn’t matter.
Plausibility does, though. In 1987, it was conceivable that a person could disappear and nobody would notice. But if the son of the third richest man in the world fell to his oceanic death today, it would be on every TV channel and Web site. This movie takes place in Oregon — not Myanmar. That Leo goes weeks without seeing his face on a screen is completely ridiculous.
After “Overboard,” amnesia sounds quite nice.