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Hildy Good, once the most prosperous realtor in Wendover, has fallen on hard times following her divorce and family's insistence she go to rehab for alcoholism. Her former assistant, Wendy, also stole her clients while she was in rehab, adding to her problems. Hildy attempts to aid a local family with an autistic child sell their home, so they can move and enroll him in a special school by getting her former boyfriend, Frank, to renovate their home. She renews her relationship with Frank, but the home sale falls through, and she finds out her former clients yet again are stolen by Wendy. Amblin Partners is a film and television production company, led by Steven Spielberg, that develops and produces film using the Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures banners and includes Amblin Television, a longtime leader in quality programming.
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In the film’s sharp comic observations, though, and especially its two fine leads, something real and messy sparks to life. The film’s ultimate shift to addiction drama isn’t in itself a problem, but the events that bring Hildy to a devastating point of self-recognition feel like a clutter of contrivances rather than an involving chain of inevitability. Hildy (Sigourney Weaver), a divorced small-town realtor, struggles to feel normal in her day-to-day life. A struggling alcoholic, Hildy constantly spends her days lying and creating excuses to justify her drinking. When her family stages an intervention, she must come to terms with what her drinking is doing to everyone around her. Co-directed by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, this film is based on Ann Leary's novel of the same name.
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The company’s investment partners include Reliance Entertainment, Entertainment One (eOne), Alibaba Pictures and Universal Pictures. None of these characters is nearly as richly drawn or interesting as Hildy and Frank, but increasingly, the story turns toward them and others. They feel like contrivances and plot devices, especially in some third-act melodrama that comes out of nowhere and whips the story up into an empty frenzy. It’s so wild, you’ll wonder what’s really happening and what she’s hallucinating.
But the one source of stability in her life comes from Kline’s Frank Getchell, her high school flame and first love. He’s the town’s cantankerous contractor/handyman, and his disheveled appearance and down-to-Earth demeanor would never suggest he’s the richest guy around. Their hesitant fumblings toward rekindling their romance are amusing and sweet—the kind of relationship older audiences don’t get to see often enough in the movies anymore.
Sigourney Weaver in ‘The Good House’: Film Review TIFF 2021
A big fish in a small pond, Hildy has long been a highly successful real estate agent in her hometown on Boston’s North Shore. Wealthy investors and corporate interests are moving in, a onetime protégé (Kathryn Erbe, in a thanklessly cartoonish role) has become a cutthroat competitor, and business isn’t what it used to be. Hildy Good, the whip-smart and self-deluding Realtor at the center of The Good House, spends a significant portion of screen time breaking a wall — the fourth one, that is. In lesser hands, such a narrative device could be distracting or downright annoying. But Hildy, an alcoholic who’s pretending to be in recovery, is played by Sigourney Weaver, who makes every exasperated glance, incisive put-down and dissembling excuse absolutely magnetic.
And although she’s freshly out of rehab—after an intervention that’s played for laughs in the script from the husband-and-wife directing duo and Thomas Bezucha—being sober is not part of her new identity. The two actors’ previous onscreen pairings include The Ice Storm, Ang Lee’s masterpiece and one of the great films about American suburbia. The Good House has nothing particularly incisive to say about its locale, or even about the business of real estate. Hildy’s success means that she’ll be helping to change her burg into one of those tony destinations filled with second homes and showy estates. There are big questions churning beneath the story, yet even Hildy’s personal turmoil feels somehow too neat.
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So much works so well for so long in “The Good House” that it’s frustrating when the film casts its eye elsewhere and begins paying way too much attention to the town’s peripheral figures. Rob Delaney co-stars as the therapist whose office is upstairs from Hildy’s; he’s obviously going through some kind of personal and professional flux of his own. Morena Baccarin is a newcomer, the beautiful wife in a wealthy couple that’s just bought a giant waterfront estate, but everything in her life isn’t as perfect as it appears. Kathryn Erbe is the former protégé of Hildy’s who stole all her clients when she formed her own agency; there’s not much to her beyond icy glances and snobbery.
The Good House movie review & film summary (2022) - Roger Ebert
The Good House movie review & film summary ( .
Posted: Fri, 30 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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Wine doesn’t really count as drinking, Sigourney Weaver’s character insists in “The Good House.” She’s not really drinking alone, because the dogs are with her in the kitchen as she pours merlot from her secret stash into a coffee mug. And she’ll be extra careful this time, she promises, so she’s fine to drive into town after downing a few glasses. Hildy Good, a wry New England realtor and descendant of the Salem witches who loves her wine and loves her secrets. Her compartmentalized life starts to unravel as she rekindles an old romance and becomes dangerously entwined in one person’s reckless behavior. In contrast, the local inflection in Frank’s speech expresses his down home lack of pretension; he’s self-sufficient and, unlike Hildy, couldn’t give a damn what people think of him.
Watching Hildy try to keep all the balls in the air is both a source of humor and tension, as the disparity between who she is and who she pretends to be steadily widens. She’s losing clients and dodging phone calls from the Range Rover dealership, asking for her lease payment. That’s all human and true, and Weaver plays it with subtlety and great comic timing.
MovieMeter aims to be the largest, most complete movie archive with reviews and rankings, in the World. It’s a treat to watch her react to the off-the-charts self-involvement of her useless young assistant (a terrifically funny turn by Imogene Forbes Wolodarsky, the directors’ daughter). Unapologetically judgmental and keenly perceptive, Hildy harbors a massive blind spot only when it comes to her own life.
And Beverly D’Angelo breezes in and out as Hildy’s childhood best friend and longtime drinking buddy. Hildy’s narration is wry and wise, sometimes conspiratorial and increasingly contradictory, as she shows us around the charming (and fictional) New England town of Wendover. She’s been the queen bee realtor for decades in this insular hamlet, but all that’s changing as nouveau riche families barge in from nearby Boston. Hildy’s proud of the fact that her family’s been a fixture in Wendover for centuries—dating to the time of the Salem witches, one of whom is her ancestor. (Cue the on-the-nose use of “Season of the Witch,” among the movie’s many perky music choices.) Now divorced (since her husband left her for a man) and infrequently in touch with her grown daughters, Hildy is struggling to determine who she is.
In Weaver’s enthralling performance, though, they have their story’s beating heart. And with Bezucha they’ve crafted some deliriously stinging lines for their star. In a comic drama also featuring Kevin Kline, the 'Alien' star plays a New England real estate agent who understands all her neighbors’ problems but is deep in denial about her own.
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