Smart House

Nick Cooper (Kevin Kilner) is a widower trying to raise two children, Ryan and Katie. Ryan, who misses his real mother very much, has a head for computers. When a contest is announced for a family to win a computer controlled house, Ryan secretly enters his family. They win! Nick is a bit reluctant to make the move until he gets a look at the home's attractive designer, Sara. Deciding to give it a whirl, Nick, Ryan and Katie begin living in the "smart" house. What could go wrong? Plenty.

This movie falls into the realm of good, clean fun. The house "talks", with a voice brought to life by Katey Sagal; consider her a kinder, gentler "big brother". The children are charming and intriguing while the film contains a romance, which should please the adult viewers. Families searching for nice films for a wintery Saturday night at home should consider this one. It is a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

One of the more clever Disney television movies is definitely Smart House. This involves a family winning a contest to live as guinea pigs in a futuristic house that is completely computer controlled. But like HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey or Colossus, The Forbin Project the super artificial brain starts to take over everything.

Kevin Kilner and his son Ryan Merriman and daughter Angie Volding are the Cooper family and they win moving into a house that is completely computer controlled. It cleans up after itself, cooks meals, makes beds, etc. All with the cheery voice of that ultimate mother figure, Katey Sagal. It's even got a name like HAL, PAT in this case. It even helps Kilner organize his work so he can stay at home most of the time. Kilner has other needs however that Pat can't supply and that his kids can't understand.

Especially Merriman who misses his mother and is jealous of computer woman Jessica Steen who runs PAT's support systems and who Kilner starts showing an interest in. Merriman downloads some old family television shows to give PAT an idea of what the ideal mother is like.

It's a lot of laughs and then gets a bit frightening when Sagal materializes as a holograph and shuts the place down.

Several centuries later all the kinks got worked out and the Starship Enterprise certainly didn't need a mother figure supervising the crew's every needs. Smart House was a clever idea for a family film, nicely packaged by the folks at The Magic Kingdom.

Like many of the recent made for TV Disney movies, (i.e. Johnny Tsunami, Genius, You Lucky Dog, among others) Smart House has a potentially good story line. All of these movies turned out stupid though. The directing is poor, as well as the acting. The script is questionable. Also I do not like all of the modern allusions from the "popular world" and disney references inside the movie. Smart House could have been a good movie, but there are just too many dumb things in it. I especially dislike the pointless and overdone climaxes in each of these movies. I give Smart House a 4 out of 10

I remember watching this movie when I was in late elementary school. As a kid, you could care less about acting or a dumb story - as long as the movie or show was entertaining. Mom and dad on the other hand, probably though different. I absolutely loved it because the house did all sorts of cool things.

I'm now 23 years old and a filmmaker, and I remember most of the scenes in this film.

The movie was made 100% for kids, and therefor they can get away with terrible acting. The acting is made for kids...very dumb down...very explanatory for a young one. An adult would consider it horrible - because it really is horrible, but a 13 year old would most likely love it. The story is interesting, but the acting can't even be rated because it's a movie for kids. However, most of these "kid movies" do have a good message behind them.

Hmmmm, why don't people seem to like this movie? I think it's one of the better made-for-Disney-Channel films in the last couple of years. After seeing how good Ryan Merriman was in Deep End, I was looking forward to Smart House and I wasn't disappointed. Hopefully, Ryan can do another Disney film in 2001.