I turned on the TV tonight and found one of my favorite oldies, but goodies: Overboard. The movie has one of the absolute classic themes: woman falls overboard, woman gets amnesia, man who rescues her tells her that she is his wife, tells her that she has what seems like a bajillion little boys, and she sort of falls in love with the entire family. I loved the movie when it first came out and Overboard seems to have held up the test of time, like many 80’s classics. 

Overboard is even greater because Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell  are a couple in real life. Fortunately for “Baby Doll”--the little nickname bestowed upon Goldie Hawn’s character-- her new “husband” Kurt Russell is not exactly unattractive. He was, however, her handyman prior to the accident and seems to enjoy exacting revenge on Miss Hawn. 

It’s also kind of fun to see Goldie play a feistier role than in her Twiggy days; she’s still tiny in the film, still cute, but she has a lot stronger temperament than most of us have ever seen in her other films. I say, go Goldie, go. Of course, her character does regress a bit when Goldie gets poison oak and cries about her ugliness. (Ugly and Goldie Hawn are two words not often used in the same sentence.)

Kurt Russell plays his same basic cocky self in the film; he made blue collar sexy long before Russell Crowe ever came on the scene. (And hasn’t been in any drunken brawls to my knowledge either.)

Of course, the basic premise in Overboard is ridiculous; it carries as much credibility as the plot in Dallas when America realized collectively that no one actually shot JR. Other movies have also been inspired by the prevalence of amnesia and dream sequences in soap operas; the last movie with the tired amnesia theme that I saw was While You Were Sleeping, which is the Sandra Bullock film in which she pretends to be the fiancee of a man in a coma. 

For some reason, though, whether it’s the nostalgia of watching an old movie, or the charm of both Goldie and Kurt, I can’t help but find Overboard absolutely charming. If it were a new movie with a different cast, I probably wouldn’t condescend to even watch it, but because it’s an old favorite from way back in the day, I can’t resist watching it again.