Housesitter (1992)

Great Film overall

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is a charming, light, sweet screwball comedy, with an excellent ensemble cast all wonderful in their roles. Goldie Hawn beautifully plays a charming, off-beat con artist, whose pathological lying and skewed take on reality unwittingly lead her to bring about genuine love and kindness. Along the way, she reunites a family; sheds light on the old flame of her "victim" Steve Martin (exposing the motivations of the woman who broke his heart); and creates two new families proving that, in the movies at least, you may be able to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.Both Hawn and Martin excel in their roles and they work really well together. Hawn's kooky and lovable small con-artist is perfect against Martin's straight laced conservative architect and the strange double life they have to lead, due to their constant lies, makes for an entertaining story. They are ably supported by a great cast of character actors and the character combinations make for some great scenes.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

This is the opposite of The Invention of Lying, and has a scene that will remind you of What About Bob. (if you've seen that) Steve Martin plays an architect who builds a dreamhouse with the intention of moving into it after he proposes to his girlfriend-unfortunately, she says no. He then has a chance encounter with a waitress (Goldie Hawn), who overhears his story, and decides to check out the vacant house, and turns it into HER dreamhouse. The thing is, she's brilliant at spinning stories and lies off the top of her head, and is totally charming while doing so, and convinces everyone in town, including Martin's parents, that they're married;however, Martin has no clue till he comes over to try and sell the house. Upon discovering her there and what's happening, he has no choice but to play along and try his hand at spur-of-the-moment lying himself.Hawn and Martin work well in the leads, everyone else works well together, and the movie is pretty funny from start to finish. Hawn is perfect in her part. If you like comedies, you will like this one. You can probably guess the outcome midway thru due to formula, but you will have lots of fun along the way.** 1/2 out of ****

Architect Newton Davis (Steve Martin) built his dream house and proposes to Becky Metcalf (Dana Delany). The only problem is she says No. After an one night stand with waitress Gwen Phillips (Goldie Hawn), she cons her way into the empty dream house, and into the hearts of the town folks including Becky and Davis' parents. When Davis comes back to the house and finds Gwen, Davis is surprised that Becky now looks at him with a better light. So Davis agrees to continue with Gwen's deceptions if she would follow his scheme to get Becky back.It's just not that funny. Goldie Hawn may have been good for the role 10 years earlier. She would make all the lying cute. But it's just mostly sad and distasteful. I hate to say it, but she's too old to play the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The scheming has some legs and is kinda cute, but it's hard to root for it. Dana Delany does a nice good girl and has one funny moment with Steve Martin. But it's just too little to make a difference.

With lots of humor delivered in a nice style and no use of low situations or bad jokes at all, "HouseSitter" is a romantic comedy that plays with the conventions of marriage even though in this case the characters are not married. The situation con-artist Gwen (Goldie Hawn) puts the architect Newton (Steve Martin) is this: she moves into his house after a brief meeting, a simple casual date. She followed an drawing he made of a house he built in order to attract the woman of his dreams, Becky (Dana Delany) who turned his offer of marriage. When she finds out this house is notoriously known among the neighbors who all are familiar with Newton's situation Gwen has only of choice of saying why she's there: they're now married. But when he finds out about this "marriage" and the things she bought for this big empty house, problems and unusual things will happen in his life and for delight of the audiences a huge surprise awaits him in his eternal conquest of Becky."HouseSitter" comes to show that marriage might be an solution to all of people's problems but they really must know what to do and when to do. It also proved that the sanctity of the thing isn't that important (if there is one, it's status plainly), in fact, it seems that marriage is about having a big house, smile at your relatives and neighbors, and show a perfect life (which doesn't exist). And the funniest thing was the way Newton end up being helped by Gwen to make his moves on Becky, and even to have an promotion at his work, and that made me wonder a little. Does really being married is so necessary to sustain a privileged position in a company? First we had an underrated architect, overlooked by his boss and colleagues, then Gwen shows up and things work alright for him. When say that I'm thinking in terms of task, job, sometimes personal. I know that such thing can happen in terms of letting people go, when there's budget cuts the priority is to fire the unmarried first but in this movie this whole thing with the promotion wasn't that great. I don't know but sometimes the movie goes for a little absurd routes or easy way out's that doesn't necessarily makes it like a genuine comedy. But it touches some greatness because we have as leading actors two extraordinary first rate comedians. Martin and Hawn have a precise and great chemistry together (repeated in "The Out-of-Towners"), they're very funny and the plot helps them in such thing. However, it took some real time to really become interesting, the first half hour wasn't attractively enough to be hilarious or just simply funny, but when the story moves forward with Gwen scams and allegedly stories of how she and Newton met then the movie gets to the point and you can have some laughs. We can all be thankful for some hugely funny memorable moments like Gwen's brief dancing lessons or Newton's methods of deceiving his boss during the wedding. All in all it's a very good movie, kind of silly, unpretentious and easy to follow. 9/10