The Good House

Weaver's character should be unlikable, but the humanity of her flaws, as well as her humour makes that not so. I can't say this is Weaver's best film, but she's highly watchable.

Themes include friendship, class, and alcoholism. There's really not a lot new here, but Weaver breaking the 4th wall is a nice touch and all the subjects are treated with a degree of finesse.

I'm sure many will watch The Good House for the third outing of Kline and Weaver together, despite it being their softest. It's not as bleak as The Ice House, or as quirky as Dave.

This is predictable adult-contemporary fare, but I was engaged until the end. Weaver mostly steals the show.

It's a drama set in a modern-day fictional town called Wendover, Massachusetts. It follows a somewhat functioning alcoholic 60ish realtor as she faces the reality of her declining business and family relationships.

Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver) is a woman in denial about her drinking and its impact on her life after she's gone through one rehab. She still has a decent relationship with her ex, Scott (David Rasche), who left her for a man. Her daughters, Tess (Rebecca Henderson) and Emily (Molly Brown) have a more strained relationship with Hildy because of their childhood memories of her drinking.

Hildy also engages with a young married woman, Rebecca (Morena Baccarin), who is having an affair with the town's psychiatrist, Peter Newbold (Rob Delaney). Finally, as Hildy's world begins to crumble, she reconnects with Frank (Kevin Kline), her high school love, who is now the town's provider of garbage collection, substantial renovations, as well as fishing for lobsters.

This is Sigourney Weaver's movie. She is outstanding and has a good script with which to work. She is smart, clever, and humerous in dealing with her denial and frequently talks to the movie audience to explain herself. Kevin Kline is a good match. The rest of the characters are more forgettable as individuals but add texture to the context. Unfortunately, I thought the ending was too facile, detracting from the film's impact. I haven't read the book, so I don't know if the finishes match.

When it is all done I suppose the main message of this movie could be "The importance of recovering addicts keeping in touch with their support group."

The cast features two of our favorites over the years, both in their 70s when this movie was shot, Sigourney Weaver as Hildy Good and Kevin Kline as Frank Getchell. They live in a smaller coastal Massachusetts community (apparently filmed in Nova Scotia) and many years earlier had something of a love relationship. Now they are just old friends, she a Real Estate agent, he the owner of a construction business.

Hildy had married and now has two adult daughters, her husband had left her some years back for a man but they remained friends enough to be at same holiday meals with family.

Hildy has a history, she drank too much, so much that sometimes she had no recollection of the prior day, even if a few bad things had happened. At one point her family and friends did an intervention, she recovered but in more recent years was pretending to go to meetings, and was secretly drinking on her own, usually a bottle of Merlot from the several cases she kept in her basement.

So this is really a story about Hildy, and builds on the apparently accurate concept that an alcoholic is incapable of throttling his or her alcohol intake, so it is abstain completely or revert to being a dangerous drunk.

There is a story arc, things get better by the end of the movie which is very well done with interesting, authentic dialog and stellar performances, especially from Weaver and Kline.

My wife and I watched it at home, streaming on Prime.

The script is clumsy (Really? Breaking the fourth wall?), the blocking is stumbling and cinematography bland (I felt bad for the poor editor who seemed at a loss to shove the clunky shots together). But in the end, this movie still worked.

It was a pleasure to spend two hours with these actors, especially the always witty and wonderful Sigourney Weaver. She gives the part weight without making it heavy, and she is well-supported by Robert Kline, Rebecca Henderson, Rob Delaney, and Morena Baccarin, all of whom turn in well-rendered performances. And in the end, all the pieces came together to make a satisfying story about people trying-some successfully, some not-to get through life's trials.

In a world of junk revivals, it's wonderful to watch a fresh story with humor, heart, and hope. Everything about this story was perfect. I laughed and cried in a rollercoaster of emotions. At one point I was enjoying it so much, I became aware that it may be close to the end. I wanted to see more.

I enjoyed all the stories within the movie. Every character seemed to have their own issues and it was interesting to see Sigourney Weaver's character deal with each of them. Her character was strong and vulnerable.

Why does Hollywood continue to redo stories when writers like this are out there? A small slice of life type of movie is missed. This and mystery movies will always win over super heroes and rethinking what was already done.