A Film You Can't Faaahhgettabouttt

Ronny (Nicolas Cage) and Loretta (Cher) are steamy, forbidden lovers in this 1987 romcom. Here they are depicted gazing at the moon after their first spontaneous sexual encounter. Does it get more romantic, I mean come on?!! (Loretta is only wearing a blanket by the way)

Here the couple are sitting at Loretta's kitchen table with her family present, eating breakfast together, nonchalantly coming to terms with their adulterous (yes you heard that right) relationship.

Moonstruck Will Leave You Smiling, Laughing, and Perturbed

I decided to give the 1987 film Moonstruck a go, because well, Cher is a fierce queen, and judge me or not, young Nicolas Cage is a heartthrob. Although I am a 90s baby, both actors have really great careers in the 80s in my opinion, and this movie attests to that.
Going into the film, I knew Cher won an oscar for her role in this, but in all honesty I wasn't prepared for the hilarity and iconic moments. I don't know about you, but growing up I always heard people repeating the famous lines with a thick Italian accent, "Snap out of it," and now I know exactly where it came from.

Given the fact that the movie came out 32 years ago, I was expecting some seriously outdated moments, and trust me there are plenty. Frankly, however, I was fairly pleased with the film's ability to navigate gender representation given the context that the movie was made in.

Cher plays Loretta, a 37 year old catholic Italian-American widow, who deems herself "cursed" in love, because the men that have proposed to her have always half-assed their way into asking her to be their bride. More importantly, the men that she has ended up becoming engaged to, haven't really been "the one" and Loretta knows it. One of these men is a character named Johnny, played by Danny Aiello, who awkwardly proposes to Loretta in a restaurant, and clearly is seeking to marry Loretta for stability and someone to look after him (just like his mother; YIKES). Loretta's ideas about marriage aren't much happier. Loretta feels the pressure of becoming an older woman, and at one point in the film she directly correlates her ability to be happy to finding a husband. So when her boyfriend, Johnny asks her to marry him, she accepts, although she tells her mother later that she doesn't even love him.

I understand many of us want to find a partner to wholeheartedly love, desire, and share our lives with and although that is the overall gist of this story, there were clearly some traditional conservative values being enforced in this movie; ie. marriage, family, and religion. For instance, Loretta still lives with her parents in a big home, and when she becomes entangled in a steaming hot, sexual knot with Ronny, Johnny's brother, she understandably feels guilty. However, this guilt is present not because she feels bad for hurting Johnny, but because she fears hell and shame from society.

Ronny is also depicted in one seen standing up, throwing a table out of the way, and man handling Loretta (his brother's fiancee). He grabs her tightly and pulls her in for a kiss. This scene would most likely not be as popular in today's culture, but the movie did a nice job inserting a line from Loretta. "No! Stop!" she says, and he stops, but then she continues in for another kiss from him. I can see now why this movie was so popular when it first came out. Throughout the entire film, Loretta is a female character that tells men what to do; she does it with Johnny, Ronny, her father, and her boss. It is so satisfying and I hate to admit this, but I was taking notes. Did I mention Loretta actually slaps Ronny across the face twice in one scene? Oops.

Loretta came to Ronny to invite him to her wedding with Johnny (Ronny's brother). Ronny's temper and animalistic tendencies won Loretta from the beginning.

Another very strange outdated element of gender portrayal in the movie was that of Loretta's parents. Loretta's father, Cosmo, is actually cheating on his wife the whole time, and both Loretta and her mother know. Loretta's mother is upset about this, but doesn't really do much about it, and actually at one point has the ability to cheat on her husband with a much younger attractive man, but turns him down because, "She can't," and, "She knows who she is." This is semi-sweet, but mainly reinforces the double standard of men being able to be selfish and promiscuous and women not so much. Technically, Loretta is adulterous, too, but in her case she is not much invested in Johnny and him not much invested in her either. Cosmo and his wife fell in love decades before and have shared an entire life together, so I was surprised by the wife's reaction to him cheating. Also, one of the final scenes shows Loretta's mother telling Cosmo that he must not see his mistress anymore and that he will start going to confession. I am not going to lie I gagged at that part. Cosmo slams the table, but then agrees.

Now I know why Moonstruck is an iconic romantic comedy. It is filled with realistic humor, and the chemistry between Cage and Cher is enticing. Every woman deserves a man that feasts on her beauty, like a wolf. My favorite scene from the movie is when Ronny tells Loretta after she explains to him their relationship is over and she can't keep doing this, that he would gladly go to hell and take Loretta with him just to have her in his bed. Definitely not a line you would hear in modern romances, but hotdamn, I felt it.