Moonstruck

I am the first to admit when a film has duped me into thinking I was watching one thing and then gives me something else entirely. Before today, I had never seen the 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck. My wife had seen it but remembered little of it, and I refuse to look up anything in advance, preferring to go into it with a fresh set of eyes. What I thought I was getting was a typical romantic comedy, better than most—after all, it was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards—but more-or-less the typical cookie-cutter formula to be expected from this genre. 

What I wasn’t expecting was a melodrama ramped up to 11 with a mixture of wonderfully poignant acting mixed in with a delightfully bugnuts performance by Nicholas Cage. I also wasn’t expecting the whole thing to wrap up so neatly and at ludicrous speed in the last five minutes. With so many films on the Academy Awards Best Picture list pushing near, or over, three hours long, it was refreshing to find a film that barely breaks an hour and a half, too. There is little to no fat on this picture. It is as lean as a film can get.

I must confess, though, that there was a moment midway through where it was in danger of losing me. I have little tolerance for films that revel in infidelity. I absolutely hated A Touch of Class for this reason, and there have been other films on the Best Picture list that have fallen flat for me for this very reason. I believe in fidelity in marriage—including non-married, committed relationships—so when this film gave me not one, but two cheating couples (and it teased a possible third), I was ready to toss in the towel and declare my disappointment in the film overall. But at some point, it started to win me over, and I fell for its charm. Then I rewatched the opening dinner scene with Cher and Danny Aiello, and I realized what the film was trying to tell me in the first place. 

That opening scene tells us all we need to know about this couple. Loretta Castorini (Cher) and Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) are having a night out at an Italian restaurant where it is obvious they go often. But this night is different. Johnny is preparing to fly to Sicily to visit his dying mother and has decided to propose before he leaves, only he is ill-prepared for this proposal. He has no ring, he’s overly nervous, and he blurts out the question mid-sentence like it’s just part of the normal conversation. Loretta, on the other hand, is a bit controlling, overriding his food order because she knows better what he should be having, and is hesitant to accept the proposal. She was married before but was widowed when her husband was struck by a bus before they could have any children. 

Before leaving for Sicily, Johnny asks Loretta to contact his brother Ronnie (Nicolas Cage) and extend an olive branch, inviting him to the wedding. They had a falling out years ago and Johnny wants to make inroads into repairing that relationship. When Loretta finally meets Ronnie, though, she finds a man full of bitterness, angry over an incident that cost him his hand in a bread-slicing machine accident, which in turn cost him his fiancée. Ronnie refuses to attend the wedding, blaming his brother for distracting him which led to the accident. Loretta is persistent, though, going to his apartment and trying to persuade him over a home-cooked meal. Instead, the two end up passionately kissing and spending the night together. 

This leads to her trying to end the romance and go on with the wedding, though she cannot deny that she has fallen in love with Ronnie. Meanwhile, we learn that Loretta’s parents are having their own little crisis as her father, Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia), is seeing another woman while her mother, Rose (Olympia Dukakis), feels neglected and suspects the affair. This leads to her spending an evening having dinner with another man, Perry (John Mahoney), known for his dalliances with much younger women. She turns down his invite to go to his place, though, and instead confronts her husband about the affair, telling him to end it. Then Johnny suddenly returns from Sicily early, his mother miraculously recovering upon hearing the news that he is getting married, and Loretta must make up her mind, marry him or go with the brother that she truly is in love with. 

This is pure farce. That tone becomes perfectly clear when we are first introduced to Ronnie and he goes on a rant about how he lost his hand and blames Johnny for all his woes. Nicolas Cage was still early in his career, but we are seeing echoes of what that career would turn into here as he is calling to the other workers at the bakery, insisting on them giving him a big knife so that he can cut his own throat. It’s big and broad and a level of absurdity that almost feels out of place in this film, until you get the rest of the picture. Once you understand the tone of the film as a whole, you get what Cage is doing here and why. We get a taste of that tone earlier when Loretta is seeing Johnny off at the airport, and an older woman, watching the plane he’s on take off, says that she has cursed the plane to crash into the ocean because her sister, who stole her man away from her decades ago, is on it, too. This oddball irreverent humor permeates this film.

Loretta’s affair with Ronnie is also played for broad humor. When she is first swept up in his arms, it is at the end of a brief argument where he yells and throws his kitchen table across the room. The next second, they are locking lips, he is picking her up, and carrying her into his room. It’s the kind of absurdist moment that can only happen in the movies. We shouldn’t be condoning her actions except that we already know from that first moment we saw her and Johnny together that she doesn’t really love him.

She doesn’t even really want to get married, either. She sees her first marriage as being nothing but bad luck. When Johnny proposes to her, she is determined to do everything the proper way in the hopes that it will prevent this marriage from being bad luck, too. But her father doesn’t like Johnny and refuses to pay for a wedding. Her mother is more understanding but is also dealing with her own problems as she has realized, from her own female intuitions, that Cosmo is cheating on her. The grandfather, who lives with them all, seems like he knows all about all the relationship drama going on around him but all he does is scold Cosmo for refusing to pay for Loretta’s wedding.

All of this comes to a head when Johnny returns early, and Loretta is building up the nerve to tell him that she cannot marry him after all. This scene, the final one in the film, takes place around the breakfast table with all the players present. It doesn’t play out the way you would think that it would, which adds to the comedy. It also plays out rapidly, leaving hardly any time to breathe. 

Moonstruck is more charming and disarming than it has any right to be. I found myself swept up in this story more than I was expecting, overcoming my prejudice over stories about infidelity. Cher has never been my go-to girl for romance films, yet she is playing it expertly here and was well deserving of her Oscar, though many found that decision controversial at the time. Even Nicolas Cage, as hammy as he is here, is charming, though heavily, yet intentionally,  overplayed, in the kind of role he would make a career out of later. The two make for a charming couple, even though there is a twenty-year gap in their ages. Often, Hollywood likes to cast the women much younger than the men, so it is nice to see the opposite be the case here. And Cher, they may try to make her look a little frumpy at first, but this is Cher, and there has never been a time in her career where she could pull off frumpy. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Norman Jewison and Patrick Palmer

Best Director: Norman Jewison

Best Actress: Cher (won)

Best Supporting Actor: Vincent Gardenia

Best Supporting Actress: Olympia Dukakis (won)

Best Original Screenplay: John Patrick Shanley (won)

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Release Date: December 18, 1987

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rated PG

Starring: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis, and Danny Aiello

Directed by: Norman Jewison