Dir.
Danny De Vito, 2004, USA, 97 mins
Cast:
Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essell
Vertically challenged veteran Danny DeVito's sixth directorial outing is a mixed bag of tricks, with all the apparent rudiments of a successful slapstick comedy. Those expecting the disquieting vitriol of his most successful films to date, namely Throw Momma from The Train and The War of The Roses, will perhaps be less enamoured with the sporadic nature of the comedy here, but there are enough gags to keep the less discerning De Vito aficionados chortling, and to whet the appetite of his hardcore fan base with the promise of potential from the man whose creative comic genius has been delighting us since the early seventies.
Our House - originally called Duplex in the US - combines what should be a winning formula of America's current King and Queen of intellectually charged slapstick comedy, Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore. The yuppie couple buying their dream house find themselves pitting their wits against their built-in upstairs tenant, the seemingly sweet old dodderer, Mrs Connelly (played by find of the century Eileen Essell). But all is not rosy as the sprightly, Riverdance dancing Mrs Connelly's constant barrage of demands, errands and bible thumping disapproval threatens to wreck their perfect world and make Alex, as he so eloquently puts in, "her little butt boy".
Uncharacteristically, Stiller plays novelist Alex with far less aplomb that he has done with his recent, similar, straight man roles in movies like Along Came Polly, There's Something About Mary and Meet The Parents - with notably less success. Alex's brooding, slightly miserable personality is at strangely odds with wife Nancy's irrepressibly upbeat attitude. Downplaying the comedy shtick he knows so well may have been a deliberate effort on Stiller's part, but it might have been a more interesting paradox to watch the crumbling optimism of a starry eyed couple as opposed to the deepening bitterness of an already sour puss. Nancy's fairly obvious character trajectory leaves her little room to manoeuvre the script, but Barrymore's tried and tested sunniness and twinkling presence more than make up for this.
The real star of the show is Eileen Essell, who plays the in turns sweet and sinister pensioner, and almost single handedly saves this film from formulaic mediocrity. Whether it's the graphically gruesome close-ups of her wrinkled mouth as she chews up food before feeding it to her psychotic parrot Little Dick or her downright disturbing pseudo masturbation bathtub scene, we are never once fooled into believing that this seemingly harmless old lady is as unassuming as she first appears.
The previously sweet, if overly ambitious couple soon descend into improbable improbity, with highly amusing consequences as they begin to fantasise not just of when the old lady will die, but of humane ways to kill her. Finally, the film accelerates towards the more enjoyable, slightly sinister side of farce that we have come to expect from both De Vito and Stiller. Exquisite snippets in the ensuing plots to off the old dear, include Nancy 's unexpected vomiting outbreak into the face of her husband through the U bend of the sink, while Mrs Connelly whimsically remarks "Upchuck is a delicacy for Little Dick. He's salivating".
Although slow in places, there are enough wincingly funny snapshots to make this worth a look. What ultimately disappoints, however, is that the promise of the kind of blackness that made a film like Very Bad Things so distastefully memorable, seems too high in the stakes for Hollywood scriptwriter Larry Doyle, whose cartoon script alumni status is obvious in the funnier moments of the film. Greater satisfaction might have been to have the film's message indulge the everyman's fantasy to acquiesce to his darkest desires, rather than the altogether more twee lesson the Rose's appear to have learned by the time the film ends. Or perhaps it's more of a capitalistic commentary. You can't get something for nothing - and God help you if you try.
Andrea Hubert
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