Moonstruck (102 minutes)

"Fresh and bright and full of promise as moonlight in a martini."

After last week’s white men behaving poorly post I am so thrilled to be here to talk about Moonstruck (1987, 102 minutes). This movie escaped me for most of my life. I was just a kid, and before the internet I wasn’t super invested in what won awards and what didn’t. Based on the poster alone, I spent years thinking this was a Cher-as-witch movie. (I mean you see it now right?) NOT a Cher-and-Nicolas-Cage-are-two-Brooklynites-that-fall-in-love movie. So, if for some reason you’re like I was, I’m here to tell you this is a proper rom-com. Maybe even one of the best rom-coms ever made.

Moonstruck takes place over the course of one week in Brooklyn Heights. We meet Loretta (Cher), a widower in her thirties, as she accepts a marriage proposal from her goofy boyfriend Johnny (Danny Aiello). But the very same night they ar engaged Johnny needs to rush off to Italy to say goodbye to his dying mother. As he takes off at the airport Johnny makes Loretta promise him that she’ll find his brother and invite him to the wedding. Loretta promises, seems easy enough, but what she doesn’t expect is to find fiery, kind of unstable, Ronny (Nicolas Cage). Ronny’s missing a hand and as he tells it, it's all thanks to Johnny. Despite the complicated situation, it isn’t long before the two fall in love. And as they do so, romantic entanglements of those around them are also revealed. 

What I love the most about Moonstruck is how it manages to be both totally practical and totally over-the-top at the same time. The story is guided by practical women. Loretta and her mother Rose (Olympia Dukakis) have a tendency to take care of those around them without being doting. At dinner Loretta tells Johnny what to order to feel his best on his flight, she buys him cough drops and gum, she sends him off unceremoniously. When Loretta first tells Rose she’s going to marry Johnny, the women have one of my favorite exchanges of the film: 

ROSE: Do you love him, Loretta?
LORETTA: No.
ROSE: Good. When you love them they drive you crazy because they know they can. 

Loretta goes on to explain that she likes Johnny, that he’s a good man, and she’d like to be married again. Practical. Caring. Calm. I like to think if I was just half as unapologetically me as the women are themselves in this movie I’d be a lot happier. 

The women are then contrasted with the men in their lives, who are over-the-top and grappling with “big feelings” they don’t know how to place. It’s revealed that Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia), Loretta’s father and Rose’s husband, is having an affair. Rose spends the movie looking for answers, though deep in her heart she believes she has the answer: Cosmo is afraid of dying. Rose poses this question to men throughout the movie, “Why do men chase women?” Looking for confirmation that she’s right. 

One night while she’s at dinner alone, she invites a minor character, Perry (John Mahoney), to dine with her. At this point we’ve seen Perry on multiple occasions getting water thrown in his face by young women. “She’s too young for you,” Rose tells Perry. Echoing what Loretta says about him just a few scenes earlier. (Practical.) Perry explains that he chases young women because even though the relationships never last, he gets to be as he once was in their eyes. Someone interesting, someone worth knowing, someone with something to say. They are “fresh and bright and full of promise as moonlight in a martini,” he says. It is an echo of an earlier scene with Cosmo explaining to his mistress, Mona, how he sold some copper pipes (he is a plumber). He’s proud of himself and she shines a bright light on him. He beams beneath it. While it’s not the death answer that Rose seeks, it starts to answer the question. Men chase women to feel a type of way about themselves. 

In turn, Loretta is contrasted first against Johnny, who is a bit of a baby, and then Ronny, our tormented, leading man. After Johnny proposes, which Loretta walks him through step-by-step, he tasks her with finding his brother and ending their five-year-long feud. Before she even meets Ronny, Loretta is rolling her eyes. She can’t imagine what would keep them from talking for five years. She accepts the mission first calling Ronny’s bakery, being told off, and then very persistently showing up in person. Ronny goes completely off the rails but Loretta stays calm, she listens, she is practical. Ronny threatens to kill himself in front of her in a very melodramatic speech, “Bring me the big knife. I want to cut my throat [...] I want you to watch me kill myself.” But still she stays. And makes him a steak. 

Don’t get it twisted, Loretta is practical but she isn’t stoic. When Ronny kisses her suddenly, she kisses back. She goes to bed with him. When she attempts to “do the right thing” by breaking things off, Ronny gives his big romantic speech which I need to transcribe here because it’s perfect:

RONNY: We aren’t here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect! The stars are perfect! Not us. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and DIE! The storybooks are bullshit! 

When he gives his speech you expect Loretta to cry, conflicted, say, “I can’t,” and take off running down the street. This is how we’ve been programmed by rom-coms and will-they-wont-they television story arcs. Instead Loretta does what any warm-blooded woman would do (at least in my opinion) and she takes his hand. And we love her for it because we know it’s right and we know Ronny’s right too. 

I do want to take this moment to talk about the script and language of this movie. Out of context, Ronny's speech seems really over the top, maybe even cloying. But in the context of Moonstruck these big gestures, these poetic turns of phrase fit right in. Our characters are very grounded and so when they use beautiful language or do beautiful things, it feels true. We trust them not to bullshit us. (It’s not often you can say that about rom-com characters.) 

No bullshit.

The movie wraps up with the majority of our beloved characters sitting around a breakfast table waiting for Johnny to arrive so Loretta can break off their engagement. Of course, Johnny arrives only to break things off first, convinced his mother will only continue to live if he doesn’t get married. Ronny proposes, with the same ring (practical) and Rose asks Loretta again:

ROSE: Do you love him, Loretta?
LORETTA: Ma, I love him awful. 
ROSE: Oh, God, that's too bad.