Babbling Old Man: Moonstruck

After years of living with the knowledge of never having seen a Cher film besides Mask I sat down with Miss E. and watched Moonstruck. Now this movie was nothing like what I thought it was from my childhood memory of the commercials for it. Honestly I just never had a strong desire to see this movie. But I’m glad that I did.

Cher is Loretta Castorini. She’s 37, widowed, and unhappy about it. Her boyfriend Johnny played by Danny Aiello proposes to her and she accepts. He has to leave for Italy until his mother dies. Loretta, being terribly superstitious because her former husband was killed by a bus (doesn’t help that as the plane takes off an old lady says that she cursed the flight and that it will crash into the sea) decides that the entire wedding has to be traditional.

Before he takes off though Johnny tells Loretta that she needs to contact his brother and invite him. She was not aware that he had a brother and goes to talk to him. Ronny, played by Nicolas Cage, works at a bakery and has lost the fingers on his hand. He blames his brother for his bad luck since his fiancée left him because of the injury.

While discussing things Loretta and Ronny end up boning. He tells her that he’ll leave her alone if she goes to the opera. She agrees and gets all fancied up. Her mom Rose played by Olivia Dukakis knows that her husband Cosmo played by Vincent Gardenia is cheating on her but cant prove it.

She has dinner with a dude named Perry played by John Mahoney that always dates younger women who he upsets and they throw a drink in his face. He tells her that he thinks men cheat because they are afraid of dying which pleases her since this was her theory as well. He wants to come up to her place but she politely refuses.

At the opera Loretta and Ronny spot her father Cosmo with the other woman and agree to not speak of it since she is with her fiancé’s brother. She gets back from the opera after sleeping with Ronny once again and her mother tells her that Johnny is back from Italy because his mother made a full recovery. So now, being as superstitious as Loretta, he tells her that his mother will die if they marry.

At this point her mother lets the father know that he will die someday but that she still loves him. So they’re cool. Loretta and Ronny are together and he proposes to her using his brothers ring that he just got from Loretta.

This movie was strange and crazy as hell but way better than I was expecting it to be. A lot of the time I would just look at Cher and go “Wow, she was pretty.” Or have moments when Nicolas Cage would become Nic Cage and act ultra crazy and go “Now there’s the Nic I know!” Check it out if you can. Hope I didn’t spoil a movie for you that’s 25 years old!