Product: Moonstruck (1987)
Rating: 5.0
Makes you drool, just-a like-a pasta fazool
Quit bellyachin' about the pan-and-scan format, stick to the story. If anybody exists who can watch this movie and not fall in love with it, I hope I never meet them. Cher is absolutely marvelous in this timeless comedy about a frumpy widow who is about to re-marry for convenience instead of love; her intended is an overgrown mama's boy who looks like he just swallowed a dose of cyanide when he proposes to her. Off he runs to Italy to visit his mother on her deathbed; while he's away, Cher meets his estranged brother who literally and figuratively sweeps her off her feet. Meanwhile, her dad is going through a delayed midlife crisis and is cheating on her mother. (There's a priceless scene when Cher and her future brother-in-law run into her dad and his mistress at the opera, it's hard to tell who's the more outraged, Cher or Dad. Dad: "You're engaged!" Cher: "and you're married!") Both messes get sorted out satisfactorily; Cher's intended decides he can't marry her after all, leaving her free to marry his brother, for love; and dad drops his mistress and returns to mom. It's a delightful romp of a movie and everybody seems to have a ball acting in it. Bookending the whole film is Dean Martin's rendition of "That's Amore", making me wonder for the umpteemth time... what the heck IS pasta fazool?