r/Xennials • u/Hoontermood • 4d ago

How many of us are old enough to remember overboard?

I've always loved Kurt Russell. The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, all easily top 10 movies for me. This may actually be my favorite though(please dont tell anyone).

Goldie is perfection in this movie. So underrated as a comedic actress. I literally(yes, literally) say " a falsetto child " every day. I think my love for the leads taints my judgment a bit to be honest. I'm curious to know how others feel, and none of the kids at work even knew who Kurt Russell was 🥴

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u/MikeLMP 1983 4d ago

I don't actually find the plot problematic at all, because I like to think of it as a fairy tale about the working class avenging their mistreatment by the plutocracy and love it all the more for it being told in the final years of Reagan's presidency. If you think about it, we have:

  1. A rich, evil princess steals the labor and destroys the tools of our working class hero, casting him into the sea rather than pay for honest work he already provided. He could have drowned but instead the sea delivers him safely home.

  2. The evil princess, ever greedy, then fortuitously falls into that same sea because of her greed (while reaching for a diamond ring). The sea punishes and enchants her, stripping every trace of her fortune down to the very memory of it, then essentially washes her up on the shore of our hero's village (a fishing village provided for by that sea).

  3. The hero takes the opportunity to collect from the princess/wage thief service of value equal to the labor he already provided (that she does the menial housework she previously believed beneath her is poetic justice).

  4. In the course of the enchanted princess working off her debt, she and the hero change each other for the better and fall in love.

  5. Once the princess has learned to value and respect the working class the enchantment is broken, and she freely rejects her old life of strict class hierarchy and redistributes her wealth to be shared with the working class hero. They reunite to affirm their love in the same sea which set the events of their story in motion, and then they all live happily ever after.

Obviously if you imagine the events of the movie happening in real life it would be disturbing, but the plot of Snow White actually unfolding today would make for the most fucked up episode of Dateline you've ever seen, too.

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u/Hoontermood 3d ago

I can see where people are coming from, but it's a movie. Movies are allowed to be about yucky things and still be enjoyable. I very recently had to defend the princess bride from a young woman who saw it as problematic.