I did not see the original 1950 version of 'Born Yesterday', so I cannot compare it to this one directly. However popular critical consensus is that this remake is clearly inferior. This one has John Goodman as the oversize, shady businessman who has taken dumb blonde, Melanie Griffith, Las Vegas showgirl, as his companion. In Washington for 'business', he gets embarrassed by her, so hires a professor, played by Don Johnson, for $500 a day to help her seem smart. Things start to go off target when she gets genuinely interested in learning.
SPOILERS follow, quit reading. I said ... QUIT READING!!
He is bribing congressmen to keep a military base open so his planned real estate project won't tank. In the process he has been putting each of his individual companies in her name so he won't risk losing everything. She just signs where she is told, doesn't know what is going on. But when she starts to figure things out, and what a louse he is, decided to marry her tutor, take true possession of her companies, and plans to give them back, one per year. Nothing groundbreaking here, just a nice feeling that the bad guy gets his comeuppance. The title comes from one of her lines near the end, "What do you think, I was born yesterday??"
SPOILERS follow, quit reading. I said ... QUIT READING!!
He is bribing congressmen to keep a military base open so his planned real estate project won't tank. In the process he has been putting each of his individual companies in her name so he won't risk losing everything. She just signs where she is told, doesn't know what is going on. But when she starts to figure things out, and what a louse he is, decided to marry her tutor, take true possession of her companies, and plans to give them back, one per year. Nothing groundbreaking here, just a nice feeling that the bad guy gets his comeuppance. The title comes from one of her lines near the end, "What do you think, I was born yesterday??"