Overboard (1987)

Los Angeles Times
"...Hawn seizes this part with the fierce delight of someone trapped in goody-two-shoes roles..." 12/19/1987 p.C14

The Washington Post 5 of 10
If there's an amnesia movie worse than "Overboard," it slips my mind...Goldie Hawn and significant other Kurt Russell costar in this inverted Cinderella story, a deeply banal farce that pooh-poohs the idle rich (who won't see it) as it panders to the noble poor (who should save their money). It features one-dimensional characters, a good long look at Hawn's buttocks and lots of pathetic sex jokes...The skimpily clad, elfin midlifer Hawn plays heiress Joanna Stayton, a perpetually bored, pampered poodle of a money bucket. She and her foppish husband (Edward Herrmann) have docked their yacht for emergency repairs -- the remodeling of a closet. Little does she know she is about to find true happiness scrubbing floors...Russell -- whose performance is this movie's only virtue -- is Old Spice manly in his role as Dean, a kindly flannel-shirted carpenter who is tossed overboard with his tools when Joanna deems her closet unsatisfactory. She and her husband put to sea, Joanna falls overboard and like many a soap opera diva, gets amnesia...Dean tricks Joanna into believing she's his wife Annie and the mother of his four sons -- country-style juvenile delinquents who turn out to be Campbell's Soup kids underneath it all. After a lot of cooking, cleaning and nurturing, the irritable heiress becomes the perfect wife and a peachy mom. And for just a few scenes, the caricatures become flesh and blood and the movie a lovely one...Russell and Hawn play off their comfortable real-life chemistry in these late scenes, but the filmmakers -- director Garry Marshall of "Nothing in Common" and writer Leslie Dixon of "Outrageous Fortune" -- cheapen them with "Porky's"-style dialogue. The kids, who have come to adore Joanna, still make lewd comments about the woman they think of as their mother. Maybe Dixon thinks she's got to write like a pig to keep up with the fellas. - Rita Kempley
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"Overboard" is one more twist on the old, reliable story about the snob who learns how the other half lives. The formula is written in stone: The character is established as stuck-up, arrogant and spoiled, and then something happens to bring reality crashing through the door. By the end of the movie, the hero has discovered humility, gratitude and love...The reason this formula has been around so long is that it's dependable, as Goldie Hawn cheerfully proves in "Overboard"...There is hardly a major development in this story that we can't predict 30 minutes in advance, but what does it matter when the performances are so much fun, and there are so many comic delights along the way? This is the kind of movie that not only could have been directed by Frank Capra or Preston Sturges, but may have been...The things that make "Overboard" special, however, are the genuine charm, wit and warm energy generated by the entire cast and director Garry Marshall. Hawn and Russell work well together, never overplaying scenes that easily could have self-destructed...The movie is filled with dozens of funny little moments, like the way McDowall arrives on time with the caviar and is bawled out for potentially being late. And the way Michael Hagerty, as Russell's best friend, covers up when Hawn finds a pair of her own panties in Russell's truck and thinks they must belong to another woman ("I got lucky with one of them phone-for-sex gals")...If the ending of "Overboard" is reminiscent of "The African Queen," maybe that's because the whole movie owes something to the Humphrey Bogart-Katharine Hepburn relationship, in which a rude and crude man is civilized by a real lady. In "Overboard," that development is crossbred with the heartless bitch who is civilized by a real gentleman. It's kind of a nice process, and it makes a warm and funny movie. - Roger Ebert