Overboard (2018) – Film Review

Overboard is the remake of the 1987 film of the same name with the roles reversed. Instead of a rich snobbish lady, we instead meet a spoiled arrogant playboy, Leo Montenegro played by Eugenio Derbez. Instead of a single father with three sons, we meet Anna Faris’ character Kate Sullivan who has three daughters. We all know the story; the rich brat ends up with amnesia and the poor single parent ends up tricking the brat to work for them and be a parent. But does the remake size up to the original?

In short, no. In fact, the film doesn’t hold a candle to the original. But that doesn’t make the film all bad. The characters Kate and Leo are endearing and somewhat believable despite the quite farfetched storyline. The chemistry between the characters is convincing with the acting overall being quite good. Particularly by the young actresses Hannah Nordberg, Alyvia Alyn Lind and Payton Lepinski who play Kate’s daughters, Emily, Olivia and Molly. However, what lets the film down is the humour being so different from the original that it could have been titled something else. I also would have liked to have seen more scenes of the characters Leo and Kate interacting more without the children.

This Overboard remake leans more towards the comedy side of things rather than romance. While this isn’t necessarily bad, it’s still very different from the original. If you don’t like reading subtitles nor can understand Spanish, I would give this film a miss as half the film is in another language and most of this dialogue is essential to the plot. If you are curious about seeing this one, I would still recommend a viewing. Overboard is neither perfect nor as great as the original film starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, but it’s still enjoyable despite all the cheesy and somewhat cringeworthy lines. When watching Overboard, I felt like I was watching a silly 90’s movie. It’s really not great, nor possibly any good. But you know what? I’m not going to lie, I guiltily had fun watching it.