| | | Life. Family. Love.
Features: DVD, Deluxe Edition, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, Dolby Digital (5.1), Audio Commentary, Featurette, Recipe Cards, Documentary, English Subtitled, French, Spanish Dubbed & Subtitled
Cher is "devastatingly funny, sinuous and beautiful" (Pauline Kael) as Loretta, an "unlucky in love" Italian widow who finds romance through the intervention of the Manhattan moon. With her wedding to a close friend just weeks away, she meets -- and falls hopelessly in love with -- his younger brother (Nicolas Cage)! Her dilemma -- and her equally passionate and hilariously eccentric family -- make for an unforgettable film you'll find "beguiling" (Time), "enchanting" (Newsweek) and "irresistible" (Today Show).
"Two thumbs up! The funniest American comedy in years!" Siskel & Ebert
"A delightful surprise...Jewison does his best work in decades." David Ansen, Newsweek
"Sold as a romance, but actually is one of the funniest pictures to come out in quite some time." Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
"A gem of a movie that unfolds like a good play, without ever seeming static or stagy." Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"Carried by snappy dialog and a wonderful ensemble full of familiar faces." Variety
Editor's Note
In this glowingly atmospheric comedy, a young Italian-American woman, bitter after having been widowed by a speeding bus, makes a practical decision to marry a longtime friend for stability and security, even though her feelings for him are tepid at best. But when she falls in love with her fiance's estranged one-handed younger brother, screwball sparks fly. Great, subtle performances and a warm regard for the film's Bronx milieu highlight the film. Academy Award Nominations: 6, including Best Picture, Best Director. Academy Awards: 3, including Best Actress--Cher, Best Supporting Actress--Olympia Dukakis, and Best Original Screenplay.
Plot Summary
Under the magic of the full moon, an Italian-American family tries to sort out their romantic entanglements and find happiness.| Tired of being single, and longing for security, widow Loretta Castorini agrees to marry Johnny Cammareri, a man she admittedly doesn't love. While he visits his dying mother in Sicily, she visits his estranged brother Ronny in order to invite him to the wedding, and, much to her surprise, finds herself deeply attracted to him. Loretta's parents have equally complex romantic lives; her father is involved in a long-term affair, while her mother is avidly pursued by a college professor.| Will they all be able to take a chance on love again?
| Features | Audio Commentary Featuring Cher, Director Norman Jewison and Writer John Patrick Shanley | | Moonstruck: At the Heart of an Italian Family Documentary | | Music of Moonstruck Featurette | | Pasta to Pastries: The Art of Fine Italian Food - Interactive Map of Little Italy | | Collectible Italian Recipe Cards | | Widescreen Presentation | | Audio: English Dolby Digital (5.1), French Dolby Digital Surround, Spanish Dolby Digital Stereo
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| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Sony Pictures |
| Release Date: 4/15/2008 |
| Running Time: 102 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1987 | | Catalog ID: 114104 | | UPC: 00027616143129 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed, Spanish Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
British Academy Awards (1989) |  | Olympia Dukakis, Winner, Best Actress in a Supporting Role | |
Golden Globe (1988) | | Cher, Winner, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical | |
Oscar (1988) | | Cher, Winner, Best Actress in a Leading Role | | John Patrick Shanley, Winner, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen | |
Golden Globe (1988) | | | John Patrick Shanley, Nominee, Best Screenplay - Motion Picture | | | Moonstruck, Nominee, Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical | | | Nicolas Cage, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical | |
Oscar (1988) | | | Norman Jewison, Nominee, Best Director | | Olympia Dukakis, Winner, Best Actress in a Supporting Role | |
Golden Globe (1988) | | Olympia Dukakis, Winner, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | |
Oscar (1988) | | | Patrick J. Palmer, Norman Jewison, Nominee, Best Picture | | | Vincent Gardenia, Nominee, Best Actor in a Supporting Role |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"...Proof that Cher has evolved into the kind of large-than-life movie star who's worth watching whatever she does..." 12/16/1987 p.C22Variety
"...Cher and Nicolas Cage are both solid and appealing....[The film has] an endearing spirit..." 12/16/1987 Los Angeles Times
"...MOONSTRUCK is such nourishing comedy. It satisfies every hunger..." 12/16/1987 p.C1 Chicago Sun-Times
"...A romantic comedy founded on emotional abandon and poignant truth..." 06/22/2003 p.4 Entertainment Weekly
"Cher was at her Oscar-winning best as an Italian-American widow resigned to a sensible second marriage, who ends up falling hard for her fiance's pointedly unsensible brother." -- Grade: B 04/21/2006 p.62 Widescreen Review
"MOONSTRUCK is a charming film in which a mischievous moon enlightens the lives of many in New York City's Little Italy district." 05/01/2006 p.64 The Washington Post 10 of 10
"Moonstruck" is a great big beautiful valentine of a movie, an intoxicating romantic comedy set beneath the biggest, brightest Christmas moon you ever saw. It's a monster moon, a Moby Dick of a moon, whose radiance fills the winter sky and every cranny of this joyous love story...Over the twinkling New York skyline, on the light-strung streets of Little Italy, through the bedroom window of the family Castorini, the moonglow falls. And all within are variously illumined by what grandfather Castorini greets as "la bella luna," but none quite so markedly as dowdy Loretta Castorini, a widowed bookkeeper who becomes an Italian American Cinderella when she falls in love with her fiance''s brother (Nicolas Cage)...Norman Jewison, whose last movie was "Agnes of God," creates his comic masterpiece with this infectious ethnic romance. Jewison is a journeyman director, something of a cultural anthropologist and a social Samaritan. "A Soldier's Story," "In the Heat of the Night" and even "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" attest to that. He's made classics like "The Cincinnati Kid" and comedies like "Best Friends," but who could have imagined he had this reach -- that he could catch moonbeams?...Jewison worked from a stellar script by John Patrick Shanley, a writer of Off-Broadway plays. He writes in the language of his native New York, the nasal cadences of plumbers and cab drivers, which led Jewison to dub him "the Bard of the Bronx." Uptown sentiments seem all the more touching when spoken by plain folks. In his big speech, a sort of aria, Ronny tries to persuade Loretta to break up with Johnny: "Love don't make things nice. It ruins your life. It ain't perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. We're here to love the wrong people and break our hearts."...One day Ronny and Loretta might very well face the same problems that test her parents. But even that will pass, the story says, for love, like the moon, has many phases. - Rita Kempley
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
The most enchanting quality about "Moonstuck" is the hardest to describe, and that is the movie's tone. Reviews of the movie tend to make it sound like a madcap ethnic comedy, and that it is. But there is something more here, a certain bittersweet yearning that comes across as ineffably romantic, and a certain magical quality that is reflected in the film's title...The movie stars Cher, as an Italian-American widow in her late 30s, but she is not the only moonstruck one in the film. There is the moonlit night, for example, that her wise, cynical mother (Olympia Dukakis) goes out for dinner by herself, and meets a middle-age university professor (John Mahoney) who specializes in seducing his young students, but who finds in this mature woman a certain undeniable sexuality. There is the furtive and yet somehow sweet affair that Cher's father (Vincent Gardenia) has been carrying on for years with the ripe, disillusioned Anita Gillette..."Moonstruck" was directed by Norman Jewison and written by John Patrick Shanley, and one of their accomplishments is to allow the film to be about all of these people (and several more, besides). This is an ensemble comedy, and a lot of the laughs grow out of the sense of family that Jewison and Shanley create. There are small, hilarious moments involving the exasperation that Dukakis feels for her ancient father-in-law (Feodor Chaliapin), who lives upstairs with his dogs. (In the course of a family dinner, she volunteers, "Feed one more bite of my food to your dogs, old man, and I'll kick you to death!")...The movie is filled with fine performances - by Cher, never funnier or more assured; by Dukakis and Gardenia, as her parents, whose love runs as deep as their exasperation, and by Cage as the hapless, angry brother, who is so filled with hurts that he has lost track of what caused them. In its warmth and in its enchantment, as well as in its laughs, this is the best comedy in a long time. - Roger Ebert
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