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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-09-22
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REVIEW, Page 73CINEMALying for Laughs
By RICHARD SCHICKEL
TITLE: Housesitter
DIRECTOR: Frank Oz
WRITER: Mark Stein
THE BOTTOM LINE: Mental rather than physical farce, but
good summer fun once it gets rolling.
It begins slowly, because the filmmakers couldn't find a
way to jump-start their comic premise. It ends with a
conventional promise of happily-ever-aftering, even though its
cute central psychopath remains entirely uncured. But in the
middle, Housesitter develops an infectious and quite original
giddiness: it may be the first movie ever to play congenital
lying for laughs and more or less get away with it.
They meet morose. Davis (Steve Martin) is an architect
unappreciated by his firm and by a staid girlfriend (Dana
Delany). He has built the latter a house in their hometown that
suits his dreams but not hers. Gwen (Goldie Hawn) is a waitress
of dubious but, as she tells it, colorful background. In the
course of a one-night stand she learns of the house, standing
as empty as her life, and decides to fill up both.
At which point the fun finally begins, and it turns out to
be both an upbeat variation on the David Letterman nightmare
and a mental rather than a physical farce. She simply moves
into the house, inventing a secret marriage to Davis complete
with details so preposterous that everyone, including his
parents (Julie Harris and Donald Moffat), believes her. The
assumption is that no one could possibly concoct a tale as wild
as the one she tells.
Better still, after Davis discovers her ruse, he allows
himself to be drawn into it; he hopes jealousy will warm his old
girlfriend as his devotion never could. Before you know it, the
fake marriage has turned into a troubled one, with the local
minister providing earnest counseling and virtually the whole
town worrying about those two nice kids trying to work out their
problems.
Kids? Hmm. The stars are, frankly, a trifle mature for
their roles. But ultimately the trade-off -- experienced
deftness for youthful daffiness -- works to Housesitter's
advantage. It never spins out of control. Hawn's shrewd
ditsiness sets a lively pace, but she also finds something real
and appealing in an unlikely figure. Martin's role is
essentially reactive, but he has his moments, notably a
hilariously infantile attempt to seduce his old flame, whom
Delany plays straight as a board but much funnier.
Following What About Bob?, another film in which
certifiable craziness intrudes on bucolic normality to funny
effect, you'd have to say that director Frank Oz has staked out
a comic country all his own. It's not a bad place to visit in
the summertime.