Overboard review

            This 1987 comedy classic actually shares a great deal more in common with the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, like many other comedies from the 80s. The investigation of class within a romantic storyline that also focuses on the battle of the sexes was the key to the classic screwball comedies, and Overboard fits this perfectly. Now available on high definition Blu-ray, Overboard is truly a comedy classic.

            When local carpenter Dean Proffitt (Kurt Russell) in a small seaside Oregon town is hired to build a closet in the yacht of bitchy socialite Joanna Stayton (Goldie Hawn), he is forced to endure the ridicule of the rich. They treat him like less of a person, and when the job is not completed to the standards of Joanna, she refuses to pay. Dean soon gets his chance for revenge, however, when she accidentally falls overboard and is washed up ashore with amnesia.

            Since Joanna and nobody else knows who she is, Dean claims her as his lost wife, “Annie.” The widowed carpenter has four boys in desperate need of a mother’s touch, and a home in need of cleaning. In order to pay off the debt he is owed, Dean has Joanna work as his housemaid and mother for his children, until her memory comes back.