MOONSTRUCK

I finally got around to watching this big hit of a movie, and yes it's the charming and warm romantic comedy which I expected, but it did contain some surprises.

Mainly, I didn't expect that the romance between Cher's widow Loretta and Nicolas Cage's Ronny would go as smoothly as it does.  

Normally quite a few obstacles are thrown in the path of true love, but here they meet, they almost immediately jump into bed, they go to the opera together, she then makes a half-hearted attempt to resist his advances, and then whoosh, we reach the happy ending where she can dump Ronny's older brother, played by Danny Aiello (1987's version of Ralph Bellamy).

So given that all this doesn't take up that much screen time, a surprising amount of time is taken up with a second storyline, about the infidelity of Loretta's father, which I found as interesting as the Loretta-Ronny romance, thanks to an Oscar-winning performance by Olympia Dukakis.

One might baulk at Cher also picking up an Oscar but occasionally one just has to acknowledge a star-making performance.  Has anyone else ever turned up to an opera looking as stunningly gorgeous as she does here?

The third Oscar picked up by this film is for the screenplay by John Patrick Shanley.  I'm doubtful about this given it was competing against 'Broadcast News' even though the lack of comedy in the main storyline is compensated for by the depth of the secondary one.  Looking at Shanley's career it's wild that he later went on to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning play 'Doubt' which he then adapted and directed for the screen. 

This was Cage's breakthrough film and thankfully he delivers what is for him a restrained and effective performance.

Given everything this film has going for it, it's no surprise that a talented director such as Norman Jewison is more than able to craft it into such a crowd-pleaser.