733. Housesitter (1992)

Starring: Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn, Dana Delany

Director: Frank Oz

Running Time: 102 mins

Housesitter is an American film about a young woman who moves into an architect’s house without him knowing, and then goes about pretending that the two are husband and wife, resulting in complications for the man.

Right, this is just a really annoying film. It’s a funny concept, but the characters are so frustrating, it’s such an unrealistic and unbelievable plot that it’s impossible to even try to think about it, there are very few laughs throughout, and it really drags on far beyond what it should.

Let’s start with the most annoying thing about this film: the characters, or more specifically, Goldie Hawn. Now, she did a great job and perfectly fit the brief as a seemingly desperate woman who comes up with this insane lie about being married, but the character was just so irritating the whole way through, being so convincing to the supporting characters of her story, which was probably the most painful thing to watch in this film.

Steve Martin, who also had a pretty decent performance, was still insufferable, obviously not as much as Goldie Hawn, but even his character, which is meant to be the more sane, reasonable one, was so incompetent and annoying throughout that you just couldn’t ever support him.

But even so, that annoyance wouldn’t have been much of a problem if there were some decent jokes in this film, but there really aren’t. To be honest, it’s just the same idea the whole way through, pretending to be married, and it gets really tiresome after about ten minutes.

The plot is another big problem in this film, with perhaps the most unbelievable and unconvincing story I’ve ever seen. I know that it’s a fluffy rom-com, but when there’s a story or concept that’s just so preposterous, it’s actually really annoying to watch it unfold, however I was actually impressed with how the two main characters initially dealt with the lie, going down a more unorthodox and interesting route than I expected, however this film is still tedious, annoying and unfunny, so that’s why it gets a 5.3.