Product: Moonstruck (1987)
Rating: 5.0
Senza Rancor . . .
"Moonstruck" is one of those films that you'll see 100 times before you die, whose lines will enter your conversational repertoire, and that can always, ALWAYS, be counted on to help pass a rainy Saturdy day night at home when you just don't feel like watching anything else. Its charm will never fail to raise a smile even if it IS the 100th time you've seen it. Norman Jewison, the director, gets the highest marks for giving us this darling slice-of-Italian-American-family-life film.Loretta Castorini Clark (Cher) is a late-thirties, childless widow from a strong Italian-American family - Dad (Vincent Gardenia) is a plumber, Mom (Olymia Dukakis) a lifetime housewife, and Loretta is a part-time bookkeeper. Loretta lives with her parents in a large and wonderful old house that is supposed to be in Brooklyn (but is actually located somewhere in Toronto). Anyone who grew up in New York during the 1950s and 1960s, and had Italian-American friends, will recognize, with a pang in his heart, the warm and sweet atmosphere of the house.Loretta has been dating Johnny Camareri (Danny Aiello) for years - he is nice but something of an old-maid-bachelor, and as the film opens he has finally proposed. Loretta is steeling herself to marry Johnny so that she can move on, having given up on life sending her anything better than someone she likes, but doesn't love.This being Hollywood, something better suddenly hoves into view: Loretta's fiance's younger, handsomer, and definitely NOT old-maidish brother, Ronny (Nicolas Cage), whose existence has been a secret until the engagment is announced. The resulting tangle of conflicts and complications make for an utterly charming, quirky romantic comedy filled with funny and wistful moments (I'll say no more). The interweaving of themes into the narrative, both musical and philosophical, from Puccini's sublime "La Boheme" was a stroke of genius, and, of course, gives the film a matchless background score.The cast is irresistible: Cher won a Best Actress Oscar for her finely detailed portrayal of the confused Loretta; Olympia Dukakis won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal as Loretta's canny, earthy mother; and the movie itself won Best Picture. The late Vincent Gardenia, as Cosmo, Loretta's histrionic father, comes as close to walking off with the film as possible with this cast, and has most of the film's best one-liners. Nicolas Cage is surprisingly persuasive as Ronnie, the eccentric but virile, opera-loving, younger brother, and Danny Aiello is endearingly pathetic as Johnny, the hopelessly old-maidish fiance.I have only one criticism to address to the script writers: I grew up in the Bronx and had many friends of Italian-American descent - not all of them had four-syllable surnames beginning with "C". Every Italian last name in the film is four syllables and starts with "C". Castorini, Camareri, Capomaggio - surely three seconds of thought could have identified some variations (hello: Pacino? DeNiro? Scorsese? Russo? DiMaggio? Da Vinci? Verdi? Martino? Bellini? PUCCCINI?!!!)That tiny quibble aside, "Moonstruck" is a perfect movie, one to revisit over a lifetime, like a wonderful old friend.