The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

“No chemistry” may be a pleasant phrase to hear for a class of high school students because it means they get to skip a boring, complicated and useless class. But, for filmmakers it means utter disaster. And disaster did strike in the film Overboard.

The film is a remake of a 1987 feature by the same name. It talks about filthy rich, selfish, and arrogant Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez) who gets amnesia after he fires a hard-working mother of three Kate (Anna Faris) from her job as a carpet cleaner. To get justice, Kate decides to convince Leonardo that she is his wife, so he can help her out around the house, provide for her kids, and thereby give her time to study for her nursing exam. As Leonardo settles into the family life and starts to change his ways, Kate struggles with her deceitful prank, fearing Leonardo’s memories will come back to him.

The film’s plot is grounds for some comedy. However, in the theatre there were very few, if any, laugh out loud moments and only a couple of chuckles here and there. The execution of the film’s scenes is where the issue was, and that falls on the director as the full potential and environment for laughter are not provided, despite of the actors’ strongest efforts.

Overboard’s plot also dragged on several occasions, with scenes taking more time than they should and transitions that did not need to happen at all, let alone be that long.

As for the acting, Anna Faris is a household name in comedy but, in this film, it seems she held back. Her performance was good for just any actress but for a comedian, she really did not cause much laughter. It is partly because of the script and the scene execution but, the Faris who made us laugh on several previous occasions was not there. 

Eugenio Derbez’s performance was funny, if looked at out of the context of the film’s poor scene execution; he excelled in several key scenes including when his memory was coming back to him. His tone of voice, body language, and overall demeanour gave the film some life. If it were any other movie, Derbez would have made it great.

The main issue with the entire film was the obvious and complete lack of chemistry between Faris and Derbez. The love scenes seemed awkward, the love story was not really effective, and any romantic gesture from either side seemed so platonic; it felt like they were siblings. This made the film’s entire premise and the driving factor of the second half completely unrelatable, therefore making the audience nonchalant towards the outcome of the story.

Just because a film has talented actors, does not mean they will be good together, does not mean the film’s other elements are to be slacked on, and does not mean the film will be any good. Overboard had a couple of chuckles here and there but whether it’s worth the trip to the movies is very debatable.