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Dom Robinson reviews
Columbia TriStar
- Cert:
- Cat.no: UDR 90115
- Running time: 97 minutes
- Year: 1992
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 16 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Pro Logic)
- Languages: 5 languages
- Subtitles: 14 languages available
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Trailer, Filmographies, Production Notes
Director:
- Frank Oz
(Bowfinger, The Dark Crystal, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Housesitter, In & Out, The Indian in the Cupboard, Little Shop of Horrors, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Score, Ump, What About Bob?)
Producer:
- Herb Jaffe
Screenplay:
- Brian Grazer
Music:
- Miles Goodman
Cast:
- Newton Davis: Steve Martin
Gwen: Goldie Hawn
Becky: Dana Delaney
Edna Davis: Julie Harris
George Davis: Donald Moffat
Marty: Peter MacNicol
Once in a while comes a comedy in which you will not laugh once. Housesitter joins that club. Well, maybe a couple of times but that’s about it. When I saw this at the cinema I advised friends and family to “wait until it comes on TV… and then go out”. But now it’s on DVD and it’ll take a long time for this format to degrade.
The simple story takes Steve Martin as architect Newton Davis through the process of building a house for sweetheart Becky (Dana Delaney), only to find she doesn’t want to move in and marry him. Cue an accidental conversation with barmaid Gwen (Goldie Hawn) in which he tells her his problems and she learns all about the house.
That is when the comedy’s meant to begin but doesn’t as she slowly, but surely, moves in to his house and his life, charming his parents (Julie Harris & Donald Moffat) when they go round for dinner and telling them they’re getting married. Cue lots of gnashing of teeth from Martin behaving as if he’s inarticulate with rage and lots of dippy behaviour from Hawn – so, playing their usual roles then. Ally McBeal‘s Peter MacNicol rounds of the cast as Newton’s colleague and friend Marty.
For Housesitter I lay the blame solely at the door of director Frank Oz, he who voices Yoda. Just look at his back catalogue which includes Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In & Out, Little Shop of Horrors and What About Bob?, each time taking a film with potential and making mincemeat of it in the proceedings.
For a film that’s only nine years old it should look better than this. Grain, print flecks and an overall lack of sparkle caused by a dark print don’t help and it gets worse in the second half of the film. On the plus side, it’s presented in the original 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio. The average bitrate is a high and steady 9.11Mb/s.
The sound is in Dolby Pro Logic throughout, in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, but it doesn’t have any stand-out moments because it’s a lightweight comedy.
The extras are the standard for a back-catalogue title from Universal released through Columbia TriStar: a trailer (100 seconds, non-anamorphic 16:9), a few pages of Production Notes and Filmographies for the main cast and crew members.
There are only 16 chapters, menus are static and silent and the subtitles come in 14 languages : English, French, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Turkish, Hungarian and Bulgarian.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.