Once again while seeing the new movie “Overboard” I was fascinated by the Hollywood decision making machine when it comes to deciding what movie to remake.  The star of this movie Anna Faris has said on a few talk shows promoting this movie that she saw the original Overboard starring Goldie Hawn something like 80 times.  The question anyone would have for Faris is, why did she see this average movie so many times and then why was it remade? I have heard rumors that the original Overboard is some kind of a cult classic so perhaps that is the reason why this movie was remade, but who knows how this kind of decision is made in Hollywood.

As far as the movie I thought it was better than the low ratings, 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and only a 4.1 on IMDB and seemed like more of a remake of the movie Regarding Henry that was released in 1991. Regarding Henry was a much better movie than this one and starred Harrison Ford and Annette Benning and had close to the same idea as Overboard. “A rich and self centered person suffers a head injury and transitions into a much better person after the injury.” This is a good log-line for a movie, but only if its believable. The problem with Overboard is the idea of how this rich man with amnesia becomes the unwitting husband to Anna Faris character and father to 3 young girls was not at all believable. Adding to the problems with this story is the plight of a single mother financially struggling to the point of having 42 dollars left in her bank account and having to raise 3 daughters. This is a comedy and there is nothing funny about struggling financially as a single mother.

The other star of Overboard is Eugenio Derbez who is the biggest star in Mexico. Why he would choose this relatively mediocre movie to make his main debut into the American film industry is anyone’s guess.

For this movie I cannot either recommend or reject seeing it and whoever reads this blog should make up their own mind from the trailer. I would give this film a grade of 50%.

When the movie “Juno” was released in 2007 written by a stripper by the name of Diablo Cody who then won an academy award for best original screenplay – anyone who ever had ambitions of being a screenwriter took notice of this, because of the remote possibility of hitting a home run like Juno after writing a first screenplay. Diablo Cody writes real life – extremely well in Juno and now Tully.

The difference between her new movie Tully and Juno is that Juno was more of a comedy and Tully is more of a very serious real life look into – the reality of lower middle class life with 3 kids. Anyone who has ambitions of having a family with 3 or more kids should see this movie to realize that there is no nirvana. No magic bullet. Middle class life with kids and little money is hard, very hard. Middle class life with kids is about not having enough money, never getting enough sleep, never ending problems, weight gain for a long list of reasons, arguments, stress, frustrations and anger. Adding to all the problems facing Marlo, played by Charlize Theron, has is her learning disabled and autistic son ad this movie demonstrates these problems very well. Marlo’s husband is played by actor Ron Livingston who seems barely awake during most of this movie, surviving one day at a time, trying to get some sleep, like way too many people facing the reality of life, a job you hate and never enough money.

I thought Cody took some risks with this screenplay, creating the character of Tully, played by actress Mackenzie Davis who provides an interesting twist at the end of this story that many people might miss if they are not paying attention. I thought the risk with this part of the story was worth it but the payoff was not as satisfying as I would have liked it to be. That fact that its been 11 years since Juno was released and now Tully being Cody’s second very well reviewed mainstream movie – shows anybody who has tried to write a screenplay how difficult it is and how long the odds. You also have to admire the 50 pound weight gain that Theron put on to perform this role and its depressing look into the reality of being a lower middle class mother.

The ratings for Tully on Rotten Tomatoes are a very high 89% and for the most part I agree with this assessment but more in the 75% range. The acting of Theron and Davis is very good and carries most of the story and throughout this entire film, I never noticed anyone acting and the dialogue was as natural and real life in any movie that I can remember.

I thought Tully was very well done and I do recommend it.

One thing I did not know about this movie at first was that this is a 2 part story and the conclusion will be released next summer.

I had to admire the screenwriting involved with this huge movie because a writer or a team of writers had to come up with a story that had to include just about all the Marvel Comic characters from the last 15 years and even some new ones we have not seen before. The entire cast of the “Guardian’s of the Galaxy” are also in this film, adding even more of a challenge to fit everybody into this 2 1/2 hour movie. The story reminded me of many other Marvel movies in the past, somewhat complex and disjointed and the computerized special effects were as good as I have seen in all of the other movies like this. There is a giant battle at the end of this movie that was the most elaborate end of movie battle for a Marvel movie in recent memory and overall this film has all of the action and special effects that just about all fans of this franchise will appreciate. I did not like the ending however, because of the way it leaves the audience completely hanging and I thought that part could have been handled better. This movie left me wondering about the conclusion next year and thinking about the huge amount of money and the number of movies that have been generated all due to Marvel comic book characters. At this point it has to surpass even Star Wars.

I thought this was a good action movie, not a great one and I do recommend it.