Review of Moonstruck (1987) by Paul D — 27 Jun 2015

I kind of loved this movie a little. It seems like so many romantic comedies nowadays, even the good ones, involve character archetypes put in different plot scenarios. You've Got Mail: rom-com over Internet chat, and the twist is that the people who fall in love are business enemies! Friends with Benefits, No Strings Attached, and countless others: people trying to have a casual relationship but getting too invested and falling in love. If you give Moonstruck a descriptor like that, the central conceit is that a woman falls in love with her fiance's brother.

The thing is, most romantic comedies rely entirely on those goofy conceits, but Moonstruck is so much more than its central plot. Moonstruck has something that most of those movies don't have: actual personality. There's the cast, full of unique characters both funny and full of heart. It's more than just the cast, though; it's the setting, and the family dynamics, and the pace, and just the overall feel of the movie. As the movie went on, I began to feel a sense of magic. It just feels refreshing and unique, maybe partly because it incorporates the Italian culture.

One thing that bothers me in romantic comedies, especially older ones, is that the characters sometimes seem to fall in love way too quickly, just because the movie requires it. That problem exists in this movie, too, as Ronny tells Loretta he loves her after, basically, one conversation and then a night of sex. There's only a couple scenes of them together after that before Loretta says she loves him too, and it's a little silly. But you have to give movies like this the benefit of the doubt, and it helps that Cher and Cage have really solid chemistry in the movie, and their first couple conversations definitely leave an impression.

That extremely fast-paced romance leads to a pretty unrealistically pat ending. Johnny comes home and conveniently breaks off his engagement with Loretta, so she doesn't have to go through the pain of admitting she betrayed him. The script smartly makes up for that a little by tying it into the themes of fate and luck; Loretta has spent the whole movie making choices based on the superstitions that her husband's death reinforced, so it's fitting, in a way, that Johnny's arc feeds into that same theme. (Speaking of Loretta's husband's death, I like how it's shown to have deeply affected her, yet the movie doesn't focus too much on it or have Loretta break down crying with how much she misses him. Instead, it's treated refreshingly lightly.) There's also a pretty pat ending to the conflict between Loretta's parents. Her father actually cheated on her mother repeatedly with no real hint of remorse, but eventually Rose says, "Stop seeing that woman," and he said, "okay." He doesn't really apologize, and most conventional movies would require him to follow a preordained, formulaic arc in which he begs his wife to take him back and promises he'll never do it again. But this movie isn't concerned with that. Rose and her husband will probably have more conflict in the future, and he might see other women. There's something deeper here, some real marital problems, and Moonstruck doesn't really dig deeply into that. Despite all these pat endings, though, despite the effortless reconciliation between Johnny and the family, the end of the movie manages to feel satisfying because it emphasizes the simple moments of forgiveness that family requires, and it emphasizes familial bonds altogether.

That conflict with Rose and Cosmo is certainly affecting, but even aside from the infidelity itself, Rose is a fascinating character. First of all, she's hilarious, dropping pretty much all the funniest lines of the movie. I love how she asks Loretta if she loves Johnny and she nonchalantly replies, "no," and I love how, at the end of the movie, Rose is dismayed to hear that Loretta actually loves Ronny. I also loved that scene that she shares with the man in the restaurant a lot more than I expected to. It's an easy bond that forms, and there's some really well-written dialogue, enhanced greatly by the two excellent actors playing Rose and Perry. Perry had a surprising amount of nuance to his character, and I can't tell you how happy I am that it didn't actually end in them having sex, even though the characters flirted with the idea. Rose is such a strong, intelligent woman, and I love how well she knows herself and everyone else in the movie.

I want to end on a simple and relatively minor thing. I loved Rose's brother and his wife. There was something about Louis Guss's portrayal of Raymond that perfectly captures all the romance in the movie. I love how he points out the moon. The moon is a motif that works excellently because of its background in the story and because of its undeniable beauty. I love how it unites all the characters as they separately watch the moon and think about the love in their lives. It's a simple and elegant metaphor that adds to a movie full of personality and magic.