Cher is luminous, but the movie falls flat
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Moonstruck has not aged well. It's a quirky little charmer, but nothing really happens beyond Cher getting a make-over and looking stunning at the opera with Nicolas Cage. I enjoyed the performance by Vincent Gardenia as Loretta's wealthy but cheap father, and Olympia Dukakis is passable as the mother (but did NOT deserve her Oscar; it was a weak slate, but I would have given the award to the far funnier performance of Anna Ramsey in Throw Momma from the Train). Dukakis is far better in Steel Magnolias, which along with Shirley MacLaine and Sally Field, she exceeded brilliantly in.
The film is set in Brooklyn in the late 80s, where Italian restaurants that are no more exist on cozy street corners, and everyone tawks like they just came out of a Joe Pesci movie. Cher is really funny. She's winsome, believable and mature as a 37 year-old bookkeeper engaged to a man she does not love but settles for because...well because her last husband was hit by a bus, so why not try again? The problem is her fiancé is kind of a doofus. But the man she DOES fall for, Cage, is even more of a doofus. Of all the characters in the film, he is by far the least interesting and has nothing much to offer the main character besides good looks and a fake hand, literally, in love.
Critics always go for prudish films like this because they are slow paced, practical and there's no sensationalism. Nothing really BIG happens. The stakes are low. Cher comes from a wealthy family, and seems content with her life as it is besides her gray hairs which was an obvious plight by the filmmakers to give her an excuse to get a much needed make-over. She of course, looks better then she ever has - and the scene with her walking in the black overcoat the morning after her night out in town kicking the can of beer on the street is classic. She gives the most believable performance, and I was invested in her character the most because she's the most decent and honest person in the story.
Gardenia is hilarious as the uptight but lovable father, who's affair with another woman is Called out by his wife in Dukakis's one money scene where I felt she added some sort of depth to her otherwise dry and rather boring personality. But snobs love characters like this. They find them enriching because they are prudes, and often anything about New York romance was praised in the late eighties after Woody Allen made it the thing in Annie Hall (1977).
Back to the plot. There is nothing going on! Cher is engaged to Danny Aiello, who has the best scene in the beginning of the movie where he proposes marriage to Loretta the wrong way, in a restaurant the mafia would fall in love with. But because his mother is dying, he has to make sure she's dead before he can walk down the aisle with her. Okay so the setup is funny. Then what? Cher meets Cage in his bread factory and they have a fling in his house, and then go on a date to the opera. That's about it. 2 and a half hours of drawn out monologues, evaporating character development, and lots of scenes with the moon (get it- moon struck?)
Cher is so strong however, that she more then makes up the experience because you can't keep your eyes off of her. She has a glow of effortless confidence to herself and her style is unmatched. She also lucked out in 1987 by being in two (2) other hit films- The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer- and Suspect with Dennis Quaid. She had already been overlooked for her stronger work in Mask (1985), and nominated in 1983-84 for Silkwood- a movie remembered more for an actress called Meryl Streep. What ever happened to Streep? After Silkwood she seemed to disappear. (Laughs from the liberal audience).
The problem with Moonstruck besides the padded screenplay, is the fact that Cher wouldn't even think twice about marrying someone as dumb as Nicolas Cage's character. What does he have to offer her besides great sex? That's great for a while, but enlightening conversation? Not gonna happen. A father figure if they have kids? Nope. And he's just a dope. She would have been better off marrying her client in the flower shop.
FINAL GRADE: C for Cher!