Over & Overs: Moonstruck (1987)
Friday, August 30, 2019 at 11:30AM In our new Team series, members of The Film Experience wax rhapsodic on movies they can't help watching frequently and can't turn away from if they stumble upon them. Here's Deborah Lipp...
I ain't no freaking monument to justice!
As with many of my favorite movies, I find Moonstruck endlessly quotable. I open with a quote in the hopes I can restrain myself from doing nothing but quoting in the course of this write-up.
We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die!
Oops.
Moonstruck is infinitely watchable because it works on so many levels...
It’s a romantic movie; a testament to the power of romance, and also a mockery of that kind of romance. It’s a rom-com and a family comedy. The script is subtle enough that you can find new insights almost every time you see it, and it’s also just freaking funny. Scenes stand alone well enough that I’m happy to watch it from the middle if I’m channel-surfing, yet the whole thing hangs together perfectly.
I had seen the movie several times before I realized, it is not merely a film centered around a visit to the opera, Moonstruck is an opera, and the rewards of the film multiply when viewed through that lens. Suddenly, everyone’s heightened emotions and stilted yet thrilling self-expression makes perfect sense!
I honestly don’t know why it took me so long: It clues you from the opening, which shows the crew setting the stage for the central Lincoln Center performance of La Bohème. When we meet Loretta (Cher), the Metropolitan Opera scenery truck drives past. The film is filled with everything operatic; warring siblings, big speeches, deathbed scenes, passionate embraces, even a bruja issuing a curse. Loretta breezes through all of this with seeming indifference, uninterested in the grand gesture. She’s marrying Johnny (Danny Aiello – absolutely hilarious) precisely because she doesn’t love him. Of course, the events that unfold will change this, just as the performance of La Bohème brings her to tears.
Moonstruck is also delightfully sexy, and unusual in its matter-of-fact portrayal of mature sexuality. By “mature” I mean older people are having a lot of sex—both marital and adulterous—not just younger, prettier people. That was especially notable in 1987. This film loves its older married couples, and celebrates them.
The movie purports to be about family; even the tagline tells us so (Life. Family. Love.) Several times throughout, the importance of family is stressed and the toast at the end seems to instruct us to understand “Family” as the capital-T Theme. But is it? Moonstruck is utterly unsentimental about family. Consider: Cosmo (Loretta’s father, magnificently played by Vincent Gardenia) refuses to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Loretta has a sister who remains unmentioned until the final scene; she lives in Florida and no one seems to miss her. Johnny and his brother are estranged. Loretta is so blasé about her future mother-in-law that she says...
“She's dying. But I could still hear her big mouth.”
(Oops, I did it again.)
No, what Moonstruck is really about is the vagaries of love; it’s about betrayal and reconciliation (both familial and romantic). An early scene in a liquor store with arguing mom-and-pop proprietors pretty much sets up the whole movie: She gets jealous, they argue, he flirts with her, they make up. The cycle of betrayal, sexuality, and commitment are present in a two-minute scene, and now you know what your movie will be.
I’m more than five hundred words in and I haven’t even mentioned Olympia Dukakis! She is, naturally, perfect.
I love everything about this movie: Cher, Gardenia, Dukakis, Aiello, and Nicolas Cage in probably his best role. Love the Brooklyn locations. Love the sex. Love every word of dialogue. Love its sweeping ambition, and its attention to detail. I love the freaking dogs.
previously on "Over & Overs"
Julie & Julia (Ginny), Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade (Lynn) and Moonrise Kingdom (Ginny)
Reader Comments (31)
Julie Bovasso is also extrordinary in the movie.
Dukakis best supporting win of the decade.
A true masterpiece!
You know that I love you glenn , but cher deserves her oscar (and what a best actress lineup was that year!)
And i agree with peggy sue , dukakis is easily the best of decade and perhaps one of my all time top 5 !
best movie of 1987. I said it. I stick by it.
best movie of 1987
RoboCop
Not only the best movie of 1987 (it still feels so contemporary!) but one of the best of the decade, and quite possibly my favorite romcom.
Norman Jewison is an under-appreciated director. All these little touches that make the film so memorable and coherent. That's his touch. And yes it is an opera, you can smile at this movie but it really does sum up life as it rolls along.
I always thought that this film could be adapted into a broadway musical.
Cher is peak Cher, and I wish Olympia Dukakis was a member of my family.
Cher in Moonstruck > Close in Fatal Attraction
I said it.
Definitely an Over and Over. I saw it when it came out, and liked it....but only in recent years now that I'm older has it really started to resonate...and it has become an Over and Over.
This script is hilarious. There's some dialog that shouldn't work, but somehow does all the same. Nic Cage especially pulls off an intense weirdo believably well.
You don’t even mention the food. That iconic breakfast alone! AMORE
It is the best of 1987, but I can't begrudge The Last Emperor's win, it's an excellent film too. 1987 was a good year.
Now we're talking over and over. We quote lines from it all the time, often without remembering where they came from.
"Now he’s going to play that damn Vicki Carr record, and when he comes to bed he won’t touch me."
The best movie of 1987 is Dirty Dancing. Everybody knows that.
Cher is incandescent in this film.
I'm not going to be ignored!
I'll die on the hill of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, but Cher (and Olympia Dukakis) really makes Moonstruck soar so can't begrudge her Oscar. And, hear, hear, Norman Jewison *is* an underrated director. It's a shame he never got a legit honorary Oscar.
I watched that movie many years ago and the only thing that i remember is Nicolas Cage in t-shirt.
When a movie don´t catch me, my brain eraser it from my memory. Maybe i could give it a second chance (maybe).
I wanted to play the game of the best movie of 1987 but I don't have any
:(
Well said, Deborah. I love love love this movie.
"Rose. Rose. Rose!"
"Who's dead?"
Best of 1987, though, yes, The Last Emperor is a worthy winner. If there was ever a year for a tie!
"In time, you will see that this is the best thing."
"In time you'll drop dead and I'll come to your funeral in a red dress."
It's a great romantic comedy, screwball comedy and commedia all'italiana. And I worship Cher in it!
That's amore!
Cher winning the Best Actress Oscar is another of those moments where the Oscar does get it right because Cher is fucking awesome. Does she have any other awards such as Grammys, Tonys, and an Emmy? She should be in that rare class of the ELITE. So should Cyndi Lauper.
OK.....my second favorite movie of all time. Period. Every scene in "Moonstruck" is perfection. Thank you, Carmine. It must be the actors....they make all these silly & simple lines work: "who's dead?" "You're life is going down the toilet." "It's temporary!!!!" "copper...." I don't believe in curses. do you love him loretta. I'm not alone. Old man, you give those dogs another piece of my food, I'll kick you til you're dead. Seems like Ms. Dukakis got the best lines.
People can quote it so it's a classic.
"I'm confused."
Love this film. That final breakfast scene is a masterclass of comedy and character, and a sweet ending that doesn't pamper to unrealistic expectations even as it clutches its own comedic absurdity.
Cher and Dukakis more than earned their Oscar wins, and though the kicking the can scene may have clinched the win for Cher, it would be a disservice to her work here to say that she won just for being able to carry a dialogue-free scene.
I believed her as Loretta, and as CHER, of all people, that is a feat in and of itself.
I can say the same for her in Silkwood.
Now I gotta watch this again...
Come off it cher over close in fatal attraction .... the worlds gone mad
Won't say anything original, but the script, Cher and Dukakis are simply perfect. Sometimes Oscars do get it right.
thevoid99 -- cher has an emmy, an Oscar, and and a grammy. But no Tony so she doesn't have the EGOT. but she also won best actress at Cannes which is soooo hard to do so she has been very amply awarded for her career.
everyone --i hadn't seen this film in years and years and i watched it again maybe... hmmm, 8 years ago? at a Norman Jewison retrospective and I literally couldn't believe how perfect it was. It was always wayyyyy up my list of best of 87 but talk about enduring quality. Total indisputable classic. I'm still sad it didn't win the Oscar because it's way better than the handsome but more typical LAST EMPEROR.
I prefer Glenn Close that year, but I'm happy for Cher. How could you not?
She's my winner in Supporting 1983 for Silkwood though and speaking of it, it always warms my heart how Meryl jumped out of her seat to cheer for her. X3
Te Amo
How can one say that this is better than "The Last Emperor" ? Their favourite, yes, but not the best film of 1987.
I love that Cher essentially abandoned Hollywood after her Oscar win knowing she had nothing else to prove nor to gain by insisting she was an equivalent careering film actress.
Moonstruck *is* an opera - brilliant insight! And like every good opera, it's endlessly rewatchable.
Funny story: my mom took me to see it in a theater when I was 10, not realizing I was probably a bit too young for the movie's adult themes. Also with us: her friend's son, whom she was looking after for the day and who was also 10. She sat between us, but I still vividly remember his nervous giggles (and mine) during Loretta and Ronny's first sex scene. Despite that awkwardness, we enjoyed the movie a lot - at least my mom and I did - and later saw it again with my dad. And again on rental. It became a family favorite, for all the reasons discussed here.