When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

...........that's amore.

Moonstruck is a romantic movie that revolves around an Italian-American widow named Loretta Castorini (Cher). Her first husband was run over by a bus and killed so now she's convinced she has bad luck when it comes to love. She's engaged to marry Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) a real timid mamma's boy who does not elicit any passion from the hot blooded Loretta but she decides to settle for "safe" rather than tempt fate again.

Her fiancé flies to Sicily to be with his dying mother and tells Loretta to meet with his brother and invite him to the wedding. He had a falling out with him 5 years prior but wants to end the "bad blood" between them. She calls the brother and he hangs up on her so she approaches him at the bakery where he works. Ronnie Cammarari (a young Nicholas Cage) is not particularly friendly and does not want to end the estrangement.

She takes the time to talk to him and learn why he hates his brother. Apparently he was once engaged to be married, too, until he was involved in a machinery accident at the bakery and lost his hand. His fiancée left him over it and he has been bitter ever since. What did this accident have to do with his brother? Nothing. He was simply there.

She goes to his apartment to talk some sense into him and the chemistry between them is instantaneous. They make love and they next day she is filled with remorse. She tells him they must forget all about it. But Ronnie can't, he's in love with her. So she tells him he can't to come to the wedding, then. They must take this secret to their graves. He agrees on one condition....that she accompany him to the opera that night. Opera is his passion and he explains to her this way he can enjoy the two loves of his life at the same time.

Preparing for her night out, she goes to a salon and gets a makeover. Now Cher is beautiful woman as it is, but when they remove the gray streaks from her hair (by dying it black) and she puts on the dark red lipstick and beautiful clothes she bought for the evening, she is absolutely breathtaking.

In reality, I think Cher has Indian in her bloodline, but in this movie she certainly looked Italian to me. She is absolutely stunning as you see her meeting Ronnie at the Opera. While they are there she runs into her father, who is also at the opera.......but not with her mother. Loretta realizes her mother's suspicion that the father is having an affair is true. Then father starts to chastise her, "You're engaged!" and Loretta retorts, "and you're married!" and they both realize that neither can say a word.

Although the acting is superb in this movie, it's also the little things in it that endear it to my heart. My grandparents are also from Sicily and many of the accents, gestures and mannerisms are dead-on. The movie takes place in Brooklyn, New York and the homes have that old neighborhood feel with paint peeling off the walls and a photo of the pope hanging in the kitchen.

The old grandfather (Feodor Chaliapin), lives upstairs and has 5 clumsy mongrels who regularly storm down the stairway as one unit. You can't help but enjoy every one of his scenes, especially the one where he is feeding the dogs his dinner plate. He goes to feed them a second helping and the mother (Olympia Dukakis) warns him "Feed one more bite of my food to your dogs, old man, and I'll kick you to death!" He immediately turns around and meekly sits back down at the table.

This movie is not a "ha-ha" side-splitting funny type of movie, but it's well written, witty and filled with lots of accurate details which makes it so deserving of the 3 Academy Awards and 2 Golden Globes it won.