Some people call this Tom Hanks' worst film. Nope, it was just completely ridiculous to the point that the viewer is supposed to know this kind of thing could never happen on this scale and just laugh, because we've all had these kinds of things happen on a much smaller scale.
Tom Hanks and Shelley Long play a couple who have recently fallen in love and have been living in her ex-husband's New York City apartment and not thinking ahead. But then one day the ex-husband, Max (Alexander Godunov), returns and they have to leave.
In a hurry to find a place to live, they buy a house for a song that looks beautiful through a disreputable agent. Although they looked at the house - never had an actual inspection mind you - and everything looked okay, things begin to fall apart the day that they move in. The front door and its entire frame fall off its hinges, the bad step on the staircase ends up with the entire stairway crashing to the floor, the bathtub falls through the floor just by filling it with water, and so on. The problems and their cost mount to the point of being way past ridiculous, and as goes the house so goes the relationship between Hanks and Long. To make matters worse, Max really wants his ex-wife back and is taking advantage of her vulnerability and deteriorating mental state.
The fact is, nobody in this film but Hanks and Long play remotely likable characters. Everybody else is at best selfish and vain or incompetent, at worse dishonest, including Hanks' dad who ran off and left with his law firm's money so he could marry a girl about one third his age, leaving Hanks' character holding the bag.
How will this all work out? Watch and find out. This was the only pairing of Shelley Long with Tom Hanks, and it is rather bittersweet in a kind of "A Star is Born" way, looking back. Tom Hanks had not been able to break out of farce like comedy roles such as this yet will end up getting back to back Best Actor Oscars. Long thought that this role was a stepping stone to better things after she decided to leave Cheers the following year, but she never got anything that really rose above this kind of role and was pretty much out of the movies by 1992.
Highlights of the film for me - Gudonov's monologue to Hanks on the perks of being shallow and self-centered, a mouse-trap like chain reaction joke of physical comedy involving Hanks that has to be seen to be believed, and Philip Bosco as the genial and useless supervisor of the construction crew who is all smiles and has only one answer to how long it will take to fix the house - "two weeks".
Tom Hanks and Shelley Long play a couple who have recently fallen in love and have been living in her ex-husband's New York City apartment and not thinking ahead. But then one day the ex-husband, Max (Alexander Godunov), returns and they have to leave.
In a hurry to find a place to live, they buy a house for a song that looks beautiful through a disreputable agent. Although they looked at the house - never had an actual inspection mind you - and everything looked okay, things begin to fall apart the day that they move in. The front door and its entire frame fall off its hinges, the bad step on the staircase ends up with the entire stairway crashing to the floor, the bathtub falls through the floor just by filling it with water, and so on. The problems and their cost mount to the point of being way past ridiculous, and as goes the house so goes the relationship between Hanks and Long. To make matters worse, Max really wants his ex-wife back and is taking advantage of her vulnerability and deteriorating mental state.
The fact is, nobody in this film but Hanks and Long play remotely likable characters. Everybody else is at best selfish and vain or incompetent, at worse dishonest, including Hanks' dad who ran off and left with his law firm's money so he could marry a girl about one third his age, leaving Hanks' character holding the bag.
How will this all work out? Watch and find out. This was the only pairing of Shelley Long with Tom Hanks, and it is rather bittersweet in a kind of "A Star is Born" way, looking back. Tom Hanks had not been able to break out of farce like comedy roles such as this yet will end up getting back to back Best Actor Oscars. Long thought that this role was a stepping stone to better things after she decided to leave Cheers the following year, but she never got anything that really rose above this kind of role and was pretty much out of the movies by 1992.
Highlights of the film for me - Gudonov's monologue to Hanks on the perks of being shallow and self-centered, a mouse-trap like chain reaction joke of physical comedy involving Hanks that has to be seen to be believed, and Philip Bosco as the genial and useless supervisor of the construction crew who is all smiles and has only one answer to how long it will take to fix the house - "two weeks".