The Good House

Grade: C-

Another movie title has joined the list of names it took me a while to get right. Along with Silver Linings Playbook, The Fault in Our Stars, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, we now have The Good House, which is hard to remember for the opposite reason. It’s a title so ordinary and bland, but appropriate for the experience I had watching it.

Directed by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, working from the novel by Ann Leary, The Good House reunites Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, who previously appeared together in The Ice Storm and Dave. Weaver stars as Hildy Good, a successful realtor in a quaint (and fictional) New England town called Wendover. This multi-faceted plot sticks its toe in many different pools. There are numerous ways it could have gone. The trailers made it look like a straight-up rom-com with Kline’s character. I give it credit for not sticking to one thing.

The biggest through-line seems to be Hildy’s alcoholism. As Weaver tells us in many fourth-wall-breaking direct addresses to the camera, her family had an intervention for her and she went to rehab. In the two years since then, she’s put up the illusion of being sober while drinking alone in secret. None of Weaver’s drunken moments feel authentic. She becomes more witty than sloppy, and it telegraphs as something from an actor’s bag of tricks. Kline seems to be wanting a Tony. Yes, I do mean a Tony. His performance and accent are so big and theatrical, it’s like he thinks he’s in a play. There’s so little in the movie that rings true. There’s a scene where Kline and Weaver are enjoying each other’s company in the bedroom, and her daughter comes home early. The dialogue through the door, and the way it plays out would be beneath an Adam Sandler comedy.

The things we discover Weaver has done during blackouts are outlandish and unbelievable. There are frequent scenes that turn out to be a dream or a hallucination, and are handled like a soap opera. I have disliked films this year more than The Good House, but I don’t remember feeling more apathetic about one, which is almost worse. I got an empty feeling from The Good House, and it might make critics struggle to come up with a good closing line for their review.

Grade: C-