Criterion Corner: Moonstruck (#1056)

I’ve said so in the past: I’m the wrong person to talk to about romantic comedies. I don’t dismiss the genre altogether, but I find too many of them twee, manipulative and rather toxic, and that has coloured my perception of the genre as a whole. All too often, these films embrace iffy ideas of what relationships are and what they’re supposed to be, and even when they try to be hip and with it, they tend to espouse notions of gender that aren’t just heteronormative but downright reactionary.

But: I love it when a romantic comedy really hits. And Norman Jewison’s 1987 hit Moonstruck – which went on to win multiple Academy Awards – is certainly a prime example of this.

Continue reading