When the world is too much to bear, I rewatch 'Moonstruck'

You deserve a break. Half of the Amazon Rainforest is on fire. The President is trying to buy Greenland. It’s humid AF in New York City (and most of our swamp country, for that matter).

I recently self-diagnosed a night in on my couch with a rom-com and decided to rewatch Moonstruck, from 1987, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. It felt like an apt moment — what with the recent full moon and Leo transiting to Virgo this week, and such.

Cher’s a widow who’s convinced she’s cursed, because her late husband got hit by a bus. Cage is a baker who lost his hand in a bread-slicing accident, angry at the world, who loves the opera. He’s also her fiancé’s estranged brother. It’s a funny, melodramatic, unlikely love story set in New York City’s Little Italy.

Aside from being a classic, Moonstruck is Cher’s Oscar-winning role. It’s also chock-full of excellent Cage-isms like, “What is life? I have no life. My brother Johnny took my life from me.” And also, “I bake bread, bread, bread.”

It’s a genuinely good film. If you’re the type of person who likes Broad City, Seinfeld or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you’ll probably get a kick out of Cher’s big Italian immigrant family living in Brooklyn. (As an aside, there’s a joke in the film about how nice their brownstone is. “It’s a mansion,” one character gasps. But thinking about how many millions the Castorini family home in Brooklyn Heights would fetch today makes me want to puke!)

But let’s drag ourselves back from the pits of capitalist-driven despair, shall we? Moonstruck makes for a nice self-care moment. It’s a funny, weird romp through NYC, with a delightfully strange cast.

(Scroll on for more gems from the movie. It's a good one.)