The dawn of the 80s meant
something new and fresh was in the air.
Marriage and romance had to be treated differently; we lived in a world
where women had joined the workforce, where girls were told that they could be
anyone, do anything, as they were raised.
This resulted in comedies about divorced people finding themselves;
movies about second chances and balancing career and romance. The schism between Mr. Mom and Heartburn is
endemic of the decade they belonged to; everyone was suffering from growing
pains, and everyone was trying to figure out how to adjust to the new
international moral code.
Is it surprising that the pursuit
of love turned away from marriage and toward different aspects of love? The foreboding inherent in divorce dramas
like Kramer vs Kramer gave way to a wave of fluffy teen romances like Pretty in
Pink and Valley Girl, to soft romantic fantasy like Splash and Mannequin, and
to complicated romantic and erotic psychodramas like 9 ½ Weeks and Wild Orchid.
Is it any wonder that the more
marital-minded romances of the 80s had something of an identity crises going on
and that the question ‘for love or money?’ could not have been asked more
loudly during the Gordon Gecko years?
Arthur lead the pack into the 80s,
was one of the highest grossing movies of the early 80s, and showed off the
schism between the haves and have nots of the me decade. Scheduled to marry a pampered heiress,
Arthur finds himself on a drunken walk on the poor side, considering becoming
someone he’s not – a sober, committed adult with a job – when he helps a shoplifting
waitress out of a jam and defies his trustee’s wishes. They later settle into a marriage that’s
complicated by outside forces; they get along so well that the only thing that
ever blocks the purity of their togetherness is those who keep threatening
Arthur’s family fortune. Linda is the
best thing about the movies; she has dignity and one can understand why Hobson
finds her suitable match for Arthur. Perhaps
that’s why it’s impossible to relate to Linda and Arthur as a married couple in
Arthur 2: the money, in spite of all protest, seems to be all that matters.
Akeem Joffer, the crown prince of Coming
to America, pretends to be poor and moves to New York to find a wife, and
eventually discovers his soulmate in the idealist daughter of a fast food restaurant
owner. Here it’s the children who have
integrity, pride, and smarts; the adults are corner-cutters, tradition-clinging
and stubborn. Marriage is portrayed as
something suited to people who value so much more out of one another than
obedience, an admirable idea that’s leavened with great dollops of iconic
humor. One can envision Lisa and Akeem
living on happily years after the movie concludes because it builds their bond
beyond the light facile mistaken identity plot from whence it springs.
If Akeem is looking for an equal, Dean
Proffitt of “Overboard” is looking for a woman willing to defrost his refrigerator,
take care of his ramshackle house and raise his wayward and somewhat neglected
sons. He gets the chance when an heiress
who hates his carpentry falls off of her yacht and washes ashore sans
memory. Dean decides this is a great
excuse for him to take his revenge against Annie and basically makes her his
slave under the pretense of her being his long-lost wife. But a genuine marriage blossoms out of this
backward commitment, with Annie helping the kids, fixing the house, and
encouraging Dean to take the plunge and put together his own mini golf course.
That Annie and Dean actually
manage to fall in love and stay together after their multiple lies are brought
to light is an act of sitcom artifice;
no healthy marriage would ever survive what they go through, which is
probably why it’s become such a fond and fluffy, if inconsequential bit of 80s
romance. Fantasies about star-crossed
lovers and dancing in dive bars somehow seem sane when you have Kurt Russell
and Goldie Hawn leading the way, and eventually they learn the meaning of
mutual respect via heavy application of a firehose. At least they can help each other reach their
dreams, simple but fulfilling so they are.
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