YMMV / Overboard (1987)

• Actor Allusion: The incredulous reaction from Annie upon learning that she served in the US Navy ("I was in the Armed FORCES?") is likely an inside joke referencing one of Hawn's previous films - Private Benjamin - for which Hawn received her second Oscar nomination (and her only nomination for Best Actress). The two films follow a similar trajectory of a character portrayed by Hawn being thrown into a situation where she has to rough it and developing as a stronger woman/better person because of it.
• Fridge Logic: When Joanna finds the monogrammed "J.S." panties in Dean's glove compartment, she assumes he's having an affair. But Joanna had seen the panties before, after losing her memory. She was actually wearing them when she went into the drink, and when Dean comes to pick her up, the police offer shows them to Dean and comments that "she didn't know what the initials meant". ("She wouldn't, 'cause I bought 'em for her at a garage sale.") Shouldn't she have recognized the panties from before?
  • Losing memory can happen multiple times after a trauma. It's common for people with concussions to wake up several times in hospitals asking the same questions (where am I?, what happened?, etc.).
  • They might have told her about the initials without showing the underwear.
  • Notice that during the whole period before she gets home with Dean she seems really out of it and basically barely coherent at times. She probably didn't start retaining new memories until she'd been at the hospital for awhile.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Rielle Hunter, who played one of the young women with whom Grant parties with on the yacht, would later admit to having an affair with North Carolina senator John Edwards. Edwards later would admit to fathering a child with Hunter, a move that derailed his political career and his marriage.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn welcomed their newborn son Wyatt Russell while filming, and Wyatt even took his first few steps on-set as a toddler.
• One-Scene Wonder: Dr. Korman, the therapist Grant and Edith hire to help Joanna readjust to her old life. He turns out to be a Cloud Cuckoolander with It's All About Me tendencies who's far more interested in playing lounge piano than administering therapy.
• Retroactive Recognition: Ray Combs appears at the start of the movie playing a cop roughly a year before being hired to host the 1988 Family Feud revival.
• Squick: It's a Romantic Comedy about kidnapping an amnesia victim and making them believe they are one's spouse.
• Tear Jerker:
  • When Joanna regains her memory and is driving away in the limo while the boys chase after her screaming "Mom! Come back!". Then Joe says "You said moms don't leave!"
    • His initial asking of if she was going to leave is this in a Fridge Logic kind of way. He says that "sometimes moms leave" because his actual mother died when he was only three.
  • A smaller one, but it turns out Joey doesn't know how to read, even for a kid his age. What's worse, he's aware of it, and really ashamed.
• Values Dissonance: Our main character lies to a woman about her identity, and exploits her for manual labor, and then she falls in love with him. You would expect that such a plot would never fly in modern society, but the film was remade in 2018, though with the genders flipped to make it more palatable.

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