Hey 3.5 readers.
Your old pal BQB here with another review as we continue the corona quarantine hullabaloo.
This movie was on all the time when I was a kid. I thought it was funny then and so it was cool to see it is on Netflix today.
The premise may be near and dear to the hearts of every first time home buyer. After all, the sequence of events goes like this:
- You need a place to live.
- You find a place you like.
- You do your best to inspect the place you like, but inevitably, the homeowner will do their damndest to hide any and all defects so as to avoid paying to fix them, essentially passing the buck to you, the buyer, then playing dumb when you notice it after you moved in.
- At that point, maybe you have a case, but in most instances, you’ll spend more time and money on suing the original owner than you would on just paying to have the problem fixed.
- You’ll hire a contractor. The contractor will take your advance payment, and then once they have their money, you will be lucky if you see them before the next ice age. You can’t hire someone else because you already sunk money into them. You can’t get too snippy with them because they might walk away and ultimately, most contractors will make you wait so you ultimately just have to live with the hole in your roof, or in your ceiling or dry wall until the contractor takes pity on you…or has spent your initial money down and realizes they need to show up and do some work before they get paid again (unless you were an idiot who paid it all up front in which case, you will never see that contractor again.)
Tom Hanks and Shelley Long made an entire movie about this! They play Walter and Anna, a young couple who try to make a go of it in a new home, only to get duped by the previous owner. The majority of the movie is dedicated to wacky hijinx – exploding ovens that shoot turkeys through the air, wiring that sets the house on fire, stairs that fall apart while Walter is walking on them, leaving him to do action movie style jumps to the ledge. Walter takes the brunt of the beatings, getting knocked in the head by all manner of flying debris.
As unscrupulous contractors take their money and then promise the house will be fixed within two weeks for way, way, way longer than two weeks, the couple is pushed to the breaking point, and they will struggle to keep their sanity and relationship afloat.
Bonus points to Alexander Godunov, that long haired 80s villain who plays Anna’s cheating ex-husband, the cad who tries to take advantage of the situation, hoping to steal Anna back. I didn’t realize it as a kid, but as an adult I instantly recognized him as the dude who played German terrorist Karl aka Hans Gruber’s right hand henchman in Die Hard. Yes, he was the villain who helped Sgt. Al Powell realize that he could raise his gun to shoot again.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 