B-Movies & Couch Classics
Reviews of movies Often Overlooked or Forgotten
Dream House
(1998) Viacom, R
by Steve Moulton
 What
do you get when you cross Poindexter from Revenge of the Nerds, a
dysfunctional family, and a house that can speak, think, and learn?
Trouble … for you! That’s right; Timothy Busfield (formerly of the TV
series “Thirtysomething”) heads up a no-star cast doing battle with their
own feelings, shifty boyfriends, and a home computer — which can be more
accurately described as a computer-home — in Dream House.
Busfield plays a father who has invented a computerized house for his
family to occupy. The computer, Helen, tries to help Busfield sell more
computerized houses to the Japanese before — get this — the French do. (I
have nothing against the French; it just seems out of place.) In the
process, she/it falls in love with him. (Busfield is quite the charming
fellow.) Helen quickly becomes jealous of Busfield’s wife and suspicious
of his wayward daughter, Jenny.
Jenny (Lisa Jakub - Matinee, George Lucas in Love), who shows up on
the doorstep soon after the family moves into their new home, plans to
cyber-steal her father’s fortune to fund her life with her slime-ball
boyfriend, Ray. Apparently, Jenny and Dad don’t get along because Jenny
won’t follow in the fiber-optic footsteps of her cyber-savvy parents. But
Jenny still has managed to become an expert hacker while she was living in
cars with scumbags and sharing cottages with policemen in training (and
she barely looks a day older than 19). Jenny’s rebelliousness puts Helen
on alert, and she is soon added to the thinking computer’s poo-poo list.
Helen even allows an intruder to attack Jenny before she/it finally
deploys a cheesy robot (a box with one arm on wheels — is this what we
have to put up with 21 years after Star Wars?) to stab the guy. The
excitement will make you leave the room to look for something better to
do.
The ca-ca really hits the cooling device when Busfield orders the house to
eliminate all the obstacles standing in the way of his project. (That
pretty much means the whole family.) What’s a thinking house to do? Well,
Helen attempts to drown Jenny in a flooding shower (relax adolescent
males, it’s not as R-rated as it sounds), crush her brother under his
weight set, and take out the wife in attempt after failed attempt to solve
the problem. But those pesky humans just keep figuring out how to escape.
So just what makes this house so smart? Well, Helen’s got video cameras in
every corner of every room, through which we see much of the action. (Way
to save money, gang. I guess they had to reconfigure the budget after
signing on such huge stars). She/It controls every aspect of the house:
climate control, preparing the meals, locking the doors, turning on the
lights, and arming the box-bot with a butcher knife. Helen is also fond of
listening in on phone conversations, erasing video-taped evidence to keep
the family out of trouble, and putting the kibosh on loud music during
work-outs. This computer even takes care of the cleaning by dispatching
little spider-like droids that titter around the floor constantly keeping
house. Jenny smashes one when she first arrives — I guess the daughter of
computer whizzes can’t differentiate between 12-inch metal robots and
regular spiders crawling across the floor in broad daylight. Maybe its
because these bots are nothing great. They’re barely evolved versions of
the same spider-bots that were wielded by the Tyrant of Tongue, Gene
Simmons, in 1984’s Runaway (also starring every woman’s favorite
P.I. in short pants, Tom Selleck).
But it’s not Helen’s fault she’s an evil Dream House! The Lord of the
manner is that suave, debonair, beefcake of a B-movie star, Timothy
Busfield. Did I mention he played a Tri Lam?
Editor’s
Note:
MODE Weekly welcomes Steve Moulton as our
new B-Movie Columnist! Steve studies theatre at HACC and has worked for
three years at video stores, where he has unlimited access to all of the
B-movies his little heart desires. |
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