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Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Blistering performances.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Moonstruck4 Out Of 5Moonstruck is a character driven romantic drama about a dysfunctional family and the dysfunctional love that runs on its tree with a hint of humor served on everyone's plate. It is one of those rare rom-com drama that has surprisingly got everything right with a balanced equation with heavy teams on each side. The conversations are flirty and notoriously hilarious with gigs that are so smoothly created, that leaves the audience in an awe of its mellow sweetness. Ticking for almost 100 minutes, the family has a more-than-welcome agenda that leaves the viewers satisfied and hungry for more simultaneously. The chemistry among each individual character varies with a wide range and still somehow managed to create the anticipated environment of a family reunion to the point where you feel part of this chaos. It is rich on technical aspects like background score, sound department and amazing melodies that are hummed throughout the course of it. It is well edited with a stunning cinematography and colourful visuals that adds the cherry on top of it all. The writing is sharp if not strong and adaptive, gripping and eerily follows a mutual theme whenever parallel tracks are going on; something that doesn't come often. Jewison; the director, is in his A game and doing some of his careers best work where his passion exceeds the hard work. Cher is confident and on the note with Cage supporting her decently but the show stealer would be Dukakis and not because she had stronger role to portray but she pulls it off without flinching even for a second. Argumentative conversations, hilarious tiny moments installed and good old romantic tale are the high points of the feature that helps it make it to the major league. Moonstruck is something that strikes once and that'd be all which is what makes it poetic in its rawness that is utterly deep than it seems.

This is such a pleasant movie, yet never ignores the difficulties within love and family. The whole thing is classy, bubbly goodness, and the dinner scene at the end is beyond wonderful.

When a bit of Dino wakens you up after a ton of previews followed by the MGM lion's roar, you know that's amore as you enter the Brooklyn neighborhood of sultry widow Cher and her outrageous family. She's sending her fiancee Danny Aiello off to Italy to visit his dying mama and promises to visit his estranged brother (Nicolas Cage) to get him to come to their wedding. Cage blames Aiello for the loss of his hand, distracting him while cutting bread and losing the woman he loved in the process. The embittered Cage, obviously adored by his female co-workers, perhaps isn't worthy of all that love, but it's obvious he needs a bit of mothering, being estranged from the elderly woman back in Italy. Cage manages to "snap out of it" long enough to seduce Cher ("OK. Take me to the bed. I don't care"), and then to the Opera at Lincoln Center, even causing her to darken the gray coming in. Cher plays kick the can as she returns home, only to find Aiello has returned and missing money from her job working for relatives. It's a luscious and subtle romantic comedy that, like the moon, will hit your eye like a big pizza pie.This isn't all about Cher who was at the height of her film fame, appearing in the courtroom drama "Suspect" and dark horror comedy "The Witches of Eastwick" the very same year, winning an Oscar for this and going from camp music star to serious actress. She is the lead in an ensemble which she shares generously, with plaudits going to on-screen parents Vincent Gardenia and Olympia Dukakis. If being Archie Bunker's neighbor on "All in the Family" wasn't enough, Gardenia is a delightful curmudgeon who may love his wife, but still isn't any less of a man for having a woman on the side (Anita Gillette, ultra middle aged chic in her showy but small role), and he too gets hit in the eye as he has to decide himself what is more important: his male ego or the woman who has stood by him through thick and thin. I had already known whom Olympia Dukakis was when I saw this in the theater, having thought her very unique when she appeared on the soap opera "Search For Tomorrow". It is Dukakis who introduced me to the "Bird's Nest", a breakfast dish where the center of a huge chunk of bread is cut out so an egg can be dropped in the center and fried along with the bread. Dukakis is loving, no-nonsense, and absolutely loyal to her marriage, even if she secretly knows that her husband is stepping out on her.Even if you are estranged from family, I doubt you will not feel the love inside this adorable family, almost operatic in its passion for each of the members. Although they fight, it is with love, and you can tell that every member of this family is on each other's side, even when they make mistakes. It holds up 30 years after its release completely. Minor characters all have moments that show their passion which doesn't diminish as they pass middle age. Even the cantankerous grandfather who has old fashioned morals that make him disgusted by what he sees (a moment between daughter-in-law Dukakis and a complete stranger that he misinterprets) speaks through his eyes without uttering a word, and various other relatives are included by having little moments where their own hopes, dreams, desires and failings are exposed. An aging Sicilian matron putting a curse on her sister as Cher watches Aiello take off for Italy gets the ball rolling. This is Sicily and the Italian mainland New York 1980's style, and anybody who has a large ethnic family, whether Italian or not, can relate to these character's personalities. It is one of the best original screenplays ever written, directed passionately by Norman Jewison, very much in the style of Woody Allen (particularly "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Radio Days"), yet standing out as a fresh viewpoint that time hasn't yet stamped out.

Just like everyone is Irish when St. Patty's Day rolls around, everybody's Italian when it comes to watching this pleasant charmer, no matter if it's written by an Irish American, directed by a Canadian Jew, and stars the world's most famous Armenian-Native American.Loretta Castorini Clark (Cher) is not a lucky woman, it seems. Widowed by a freak bus accident, she wiles away the shank of her thirties as a self-employed accountant who lives with her aging family under the skyscrapers of the Big Apple. Just as she readies herself for a loveless marriage with the sweet-but-simple Johnny Cammarini (Danny Aiello), love strikes in the form of Johnny's bitter brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage). Can Loretta do the right thing, even if she doesn't quite know what that is?"Moonstruck" is a comedy that works in serious themes, like death, infidelity, faith, and hopelessness. Writer John Patrick Shanley operates with a deft hand and an ear for how people say what they really mean even when they try to say something else, like when Loretta's cheating father Cosmo (Vincent Gardinia, along with Cage one of the authentic Italian-American cast members) warns her against marriage because, well, he's cheap and doesn't want to pay for it.Seeing her ring from Johnny is just a pinky ring (Johnny wasn't prepared when he popped the question), Pop complains when she tells him it's temporary: "Everything is temporary! That don't excuse nothing!"Cher won an Oscar for her performance, which wasn't maybe the best of all performances that year but carries the film ably. I'm not a Cher fan myself, but it's hard not to admire the way she plays Loretta against expectations. She's quiet and subtle when you expect big and loud. Even late in the film, when she undergoes her expected transformation into a glamour queen, she doesn't go all diva about it."You look beautiful," Ronny tells her. "Your hair.""Yeah, I had it done," she says with a shrug.Cage is the other over-the-top actor here, but he succeeds with that by playing his part more for laughs. He blames Johnny for the loss of his hand and his fiancé, not that it's fair of him and he knows it. "I ain't no freakin' monument to justice," he exclaims.Cage's best work in the movie comes at the end, when he's not talking so much as listening in the background while the other characters have their big confessional moments at the breakfast table. That concluding scene is a showcase of fine comic acting and writing, which director Norman Jewison (another guy who liked to go big in other productions) plays very lightly and well, working the silences as much as the speeches to wry effect.Even the secondary performers, like Feodor Chaliapin as Cosmo's confused father, and Julie Bovasso and Louis Guss as Loretta's aunt and uncle, make their marks. This is a film about family that celebrates all its members.I don't quite buy a central premise of the film, that a man cheats on his wife because he's afraid of death, and feel some of the secondary scenes take up too much time, but there's a simple joy even in those scenes which sticks. Olympia Dukakis, the other Oscar-winner in the cast, has a great scene with Aiello which justifies his character's somewhat superfluous presence.To be in love is to die a little, but dying seems like a small price to pay for the pleasure of love. Such is the simple magical lesson on offer in "Moonstruck."