The Money Pit

The Money Pit was scheduled as a Christmas release, and then pulled a few weeks before show time. The studios always put on a good front and say that such a switch occurs merely to avoid market saturation. But usually these about-faces signal big trouble.

This time, however, it looks like the studio was telling the truth (the film was produced by Steven Spielberg’s production company). The Money Pit is a perfectly enjoyable and very commercial lark, about one of those universal human disasters with which everybody can sympathize.

In this case, it’s the purchase of a house that turns out to be a horrific, gigantic, monstrous lemon. From the day that our upscale (and unmarried) protagonists (Tom Hanks and Shelley Long) move into their lovely place in the burbs outside New York City, the house does an inexorable slide into disintegration.

They should’ve known. It was sold to them by an eccentric (Maureen Stapleton) with peach-colored hair who had to sell the place because her husband had just been exposed as Hitler’s poolman.

Within hours, the dream house is exacting a terrible punishment upon the new inhabitants. The door falls in, the stairs collapse, and a panicked raccoon leaps out of the dumbwaiter. When Long turns a water valve, the house emits strange, primeval groans and shrieks as the pipes prepare to give way.

Thus begins the process of repairs, and the parade of sleazy gougers who offer to fix the place up. First it is necessary to destroy the house, which they cheerfully do.

Naturally, the eruption of this chaos puts a strain on our central relationship. And so does the lechery of Long’s vain ex-husband (played by ballet star Alexander Godunov), a conductor, who plies Long with wine and song when Hanks is away on business. You see, the relationship is supposed to be like the house – it falls apart, but the foundation is solid, and it all comes together again.

Okay, fine. Unfortunately, David Giler’s script isn’t strong enough to convince us that the break-up is all that serious. Frankly, the characters are pretty one-dimensional, and the split is a transparent device to goose the happy ending.

Luckily, however, Giler’s situation is so fundamentally funny – and Hanks and Long are so good – the comedy plays very nicely. The disintegrating house has been sure-fire movie material since at least the days of Buster Keaton, and it’s still working.

And in Richard Benjamin, The Money Pit has a director who knows how to exploit the comic potential of the situation. He has a sure sense of how to unload the film’s many punch lines, including the ones that tag the couple of Rube Goldberg set-pieces, in which one disaster leads to another.

I miss the quieter, graceful moments from Benjamin, the kind he found in his directing debut, My Favorite Year. But he had the crowd at the preview I attended laughing louder than any audience I’d sat with in months. That’s usually a good indication that the director has laid a solid foundation.

First published in The Herald, March 27, 1986

I’m really digging up some lame-o reviews now, for surely this movie is not good? David Giler has long been associated with the Alien franchise, and he also scripted Myra Breckinridge, The Parallax View, and Southern Comfort. Gordon Willis photographed this movie.