How Did the "Overboard" Remake Even See the Light of Day in This Day and Age?

by Ran

Hollywood filmmakers have been making a concerted effort to combat racial stereotyping and a lack of diversity onscreen in recent years. Or have they? Because for every Black Panther there's at least one Overboard.

While the original Overboard, released in 1987, features an all-white cast, it's far less offensive than the 2018 remake (actually, we didn't find the original offensive at all).

But the filmmakers behind the remake hold a Mexican man, Leo Montenegro, responsible for a blue-collar white woman, Kate Sullivan, losing her job, and by extension, nearly her home, as she subsequently receives an eviction notice. She soon gets him a job as an -- wait for it -- unskilled laborer and turns him into her maid just for good measure. If that weren't bad enough, Leo's not even allowed to use the bathroom in the house; he's given a bottle to take back to the shed where he's forced to sleep on a cot.

It's shocking that a movie like this could become such a big hit (Overboard grossed 7 times its production budget) in an era filled with so much xenophobic rhetoric largely aimed at Mexican immigrants. It takes more than a gender-swapped update of a comedy classic to rectify the sins of Hollywood's past. And female white supremacy is no better than the male variety.