Going Overboard - Thoughts

Considering I’ve been watching relatively newer movies these past weeks, I figured let’s try something a little older. The movie of choice was Going Overboard, from 1989 with Adam Sandler. I expected for it to be in keeping with comedies from the 80’s, like Ski School and Miracle Beach. While it had a lot of the same elements, including an interesting location (that being a cruise ship), beauty pageant contestants on board, and plenty of bikini clad women, it seemed to fail where others have succeeded.


Interestingly this movie was Adam Sandler’s first ever feature appearance. Noticeably younger, it became imminent that his humor had a long way to go, as often times it came off as annoying and not necessarily funny. What succeeded were the crazy and unexpected that things would happen from time to time, which seems to have over the years become expected of spoofs. If handled better, it could have saved the movie. I’d attribute the movies overall insignificance to the weak plot, and similarly weak characters. Sandler’s role as an aspiring comedian alone was insufficient to keep the movie afloat, and over a duration of 99 minutes it just felt like a drag.

Considering the age of the movie and the low budget it’s understandable that the quality overall was lackluster. Though I was watching a Region 1 US release, the video lacked color vibrancy. That said the picture quality was surely acceptable. Sound was presented in 2.0 Dolby Stereo, and was sufficient to hear and understand dialog properly. The aspect ratio was 4:3 standard/fullscreen Pan and Scan. Since I was watching it on a widescreen TV, there was letterboxing on the sides (left/right)

My Recommendation: Skip It