Overboard

Directed by Rob Greenberg, Overboard follows Anna Faris’ Kate Sullivan as she successfully convinces an amnesiac playboy (Eugenio Derbez’s Leonardo) that he’s her husband and subsequently puts him in charge of her household’s most undesirable tasks. It’s a familiar yet workable premise that is, for the most part, employed to completely (and aggressively) forgettable effect by Greenberg, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Bob Fisher and Leslie Dixon, delivers a sluggish comedy that doesn’t contain a whole lot in the way of forward momentum – with the decidedly hit-and-miss atmosphere compounded by an ongoing paucity of laughs and excessively padded-out, overlong running time. The movie’s tolerable vibe, then, is due almost entirely to the affable efforts of its various performers, as Faris and Derbez, though entirely lacking in romantic chemistry together, offer up pleasant-enough work that tends to smooth over the far-from-streamlined narrative’s myriad of bumps and missteps (and it’s clear, too, that the eclectic periphery cast, which includes John Hannah, Mel Rodriguez, and Swoosie Kurtz, provides able support around the picture’s margins). By the time the predictably uplifting conclusion rolls around, Overboard has cemented its place as a thoroughly middle-of-the-road endeavor that’s rarely, if ever, able to entirely justify its very existence.

** out of ****