che bella luna

I finally watched Moonstruck

Weekend before last, I found myself feeling listless and not really able to land on a task. This is always a sign that I need to focus on something specific, to try to narrow my world a little bit and not feel so overwhelmed by choice. So I decided to, at long last, remedy a transgression so heinous that I hesitate to even mention it by name.

It’s the year of our Lord 2026, and I had still never seen the 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck. Take away my gay card, please, because I am not deserving of it.

There’s a confluence of reasons that resulted in me being in my 50s and never having seen the movie that won Cher the Oscar. It came out when I was in high school, and you didn’t exactly go with your buddies to see romantic comedies like you did sci-fi or horror or action films. It might have made its way to HBO before I went to college, but for some reason, the whole idea of it didn’t really appeal to me all that much and it just didn’t seem like an essential watch.

How wrong I was. I was hooked from the opening credits. Moonstruck is the kind of movie that would never be made today - or at least one that wouldn’t get the backing of a major studio. It would be made by Netflix or Hulu or maybe even Lifetime and would go direct to TV. It certainly wouldn’t have the star power of Cher and Nicolas Cage, as well as the raft of character actors that play Loretta Castorini’s friends and family. It simply doesn’t have enough explosions and guns to be a big Hollywood success today. There’s no potential for limitless sequels to milk a cash cow dry. But what Moonstruck is is a solid story, well written and terrifically acted. The TikTok generation and the short attention span theater it has created may not appreciate it, but back in 1987, they sure did. And even me with my addled attention span that I have been ironically trying to get back by watching movies and TV shows, loved every minute of it.

I was also under this false impression that Cher’s Oscar for Moonstruck was a pity Oscar, a “we’re sorry we didn’t even nominate you for Mask” Oscar. But you know what, she really and truly deserved the Oscar that year. She plays Loretta with just the right amount of humanity, you almost forget that it’s Cher who is playing the role. And with Cher’s bigger than life persona, that is really saying something. I would argue that making you forget it was her was something that Madonna never really pulled off, which I think is a big contributor to the perception that she’s not a good actress. She is also not a natural actress, whereas Cher just embodies the role of Loretta, be it in the first half where she is frumpy but no nonsense Loretta who is set to marry a man she does not love, or in the second half where she glams up and finds herself in love with her fiance’s brother. Plus there’s so much micro-acting going on, via looks on her face and by staying in character even when the action is not on her, that made Cher truly Oscar worthy that year.

There are also other little things in the movie that make is so good. New York in the 80s is as much a character in the movie as any actor. The local color and attention to detail is something that fills in the open spaces and makes the movie bigger than the sum of its parts. The Moonstruck house, at 19 Cranberry Street in Brooklyn Heights, is a popular tourist stop and has been on the market off and on since the release of the movie, recently selling just last year for $11 million. If I ever get back to New York, I definitely will make it a point to go see it, just like I did the Amityville Horror house in Long Island when I visited in 2015.

And because I’m all about physical media these days, especially when it comes to movies, I think I’m going to have to spring for the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Moonstruck that was released in 2020. A movie as classic as this deserves to be owned.

Like I said, Moonstruck is a movie from a bygone era, when major studios put money behind romantic comedies and other smaller pictures. Today, if Moonstruck were a theatrical release, itwould probably be made by A24 and only be screened in smaller art-house movie theaters, but thank goodness it came out when it did. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.