Overboard or Overextended?

Are you familiar with the 1987 movie Overboard starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell? 

Here’s the plot:  Kurt Russell, a poor handyman with 4 boys all under the age of 13 and two mangy dogs, customizes a closet on the yacht of rich bitch socialite Goldie Hawn.  Goldie, a bitch, is unhappy with the work, refuses to pay and ultimately throws all of Kurt’s tools over the side of the yacht.  Later on that evening while searching for her wedding rings, Goldie accidently falls overboard, plunging into the Pacific.  When she is rescued the following morning by some fisherman, she is taken to a hospital where it is determined that she has amnesia.  She is still a bitch.  Seeing the report on the news, Russell visits the hospital where he claims Hawn as his wife and brings her home to his porn-watching children, dogs and hovel.  His children, obviously, are in on the deception.  His plan is to keep Hawn with him for a month, where she will cook, clean and care for his children and dogs until she makes up the $600 he was owed.  They never said what he was going to do with her when the month was over but naturally they didn’t have to because in typical Hollywood style, Goldie has a catharsis, becomes a model wife and the two fall in love.  Blah, blah. 

Meanwhile, Hawn’s mother keeps calling the yacht looking for her daughter.  Goldie’s stuffy husband is aware that Hawn was taken to a hospital with amnesia but he left her there, since she was a bitch.  He makes up excuse after excuse to Hawn’s mother as to Goldie’s whereabouts until his Mother-in-Law tells him he has a week to produce her daughter.  That’s when Stuffy Husband goes to find Hawn.  He appears at the Russell hovel, where miraculously, after one look at him, Hawn regains her memory, realizes what Russell did to her, falls out of love with him and leaves with Stuffy.  Kurt Russell, a man in love, enlists the help of the Coast Guard and pursues the yacht.  Heroically, he jumps overboard to swim to the yacht, which by Hollywood standards, is always a first rate idea.  Goldie, of course, realizes that she can’t live without Kurt and jumps overboard as well.  

They meet somewhere in the Pacific and  hang on to each other until they are rescued by the Coast Guard.  Kurt Russell is stunned by Goldie Hawn’s love for him, saying that he can’t believe she gave up the yacht and wealth to be with him.  She confesses that she didn’t.  It was all hers you see; the money and the yacht.  Kurt is delighted as you can well imagine as are his dirty-faced children.

As far-fetched movies go, we can certainly believe that Goldie Hawn would leave Stuffy Husband.  After all she still had all the money. 

But what do you suppose the outcome would have been if the money wasn’t Goldie’s, but rather Stuffy’s?  Would she still have given it up?  I’m thinking no. 

No woman in her right mind gives up a yacht, and millions of dollars to go live in a hovel with an out of work handyman,  4 snot-nosed, porn-watching kids and two tick-infested dogs.  I don’t care if it was a shirtless 1987 Kurt Russell.