Hildy Good, the savvy and self-delusional real estate agent at the center of The Good House, spends a significant portion of her screen time breaking one wall—namely, the fourth. In lesser hands, such a narrative device could be distracting or downright annoying. But Hildy, an alcoholic pretending to be in recovery, is played by Sigourney Weaver, who makes every exasperated look, pointed sneer, and false excuse absolutely magnetic. Her direct comments to the camera are not just asides, but the core of the film. And, in ways both intended and unintended, Hildy's comments to the audience are much more compelling than what goes on between her and most of the not-quite-dimensional small-town characters around her; the key exception is the high school sweetheart that Hildy reconnects. with, played to perfection by Kevin Kline.
Writers/directors Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, in collaboration with screenwriter Thomas Bezucha, have adapted Ann Leary's best-selling novel with an emphasis on its comedic side and a sometimes clumsy understanding of not always convincing plot mechanics. The film's final shift into addiction drama isn't a problem in and of itself, but the events that bring Hildy to a devastating point of self-recognition feel like a bunch of contraptions rather than an encircling chain of inevitability.
Directors: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky
Writers: Thomas Bezucha, Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin
A big fish in a small pond, Hildy has long been a highly successful real estate agent in her hometown of Boston's North Shore. However, the market, like all markets, is changing. Wealthy investors and corporate interests are moving in, a former protégé has become a cutthroat competitor, and business is not what it used to be. Still, Hildy continues to play the role of generous provider, helping to cover the expenses of her grieving daughters, the grim married and the distraught aspiring artist, and she continues to pay child support to the ex-husband who left her for a man.
The idea of real estate as a window to the soul is central to the source material, and some of Hildy's comments to us are lifted directly from the novel. She can tell you the status of a marriage after a quick tour of the kitchen. Chief among the unhappily married are a couple of well-to-do freshmen from the city and a psychiatrist and his perpetually dour wife.
Rebecca de Baccarin becomes Hildy's confidant, and it doesn't take a kitchen audit to detect her vulnerability and her discontent. But mostly the stories of the assembled characters have little dimension other than as plot devices.
As imperious as she can be, this proud descendant of a Salem "witch" is also very impressive. Confronted with the hard-to-sell home of a working-class couple desperate to move to a bigger city and a better school for their autistic son (Silas Pereira-Olson), Hildy masterfully crafts a renovation plan to improve the quality from your home. salability. A key part of that plan is Frank (Kline), whose scruffy construction worker belies the fact that he is one of the richest men in town, a thriving garbage collection service among the businesses he owns.
Passing by a gas station where Frank is filling up his tank, Hildy swoops in to make her renewal proposal, and her fighting and flirting chemistry takes the story to a new level. To the beat of Argent's song blaring on his truck radio (one of several boomer-friendly tunes that punctuate the soundtrack), Frank looks at Hildy's real estate agent outfit and sees a masquerade. : "The butcher's daughter has gone with fancy pants."
Besides Frank, and us, who else is worth Hildy's conversational effort? Lots of people bore her, disappoint her, or make her mad (and who can't relate to that?). It's a joy to watch her react to the out-of-the-box self-centeredness of her useless young assistant (an awfully funny twist on Imogene Forbes Wolodarsky, the directors' daughter). Unapologetically judgmental and highly insightful, Hildy harbors a huge blind spot only when it comes to her own life.
Having been subjected to an intervention, or, as she calls it, an ambush, arranged by her family and seen in tongue-in-cheek memory, she has already passed rehab when we meet her. In public, she plays the part of someone in recovery, drinking soda decorously; she spends her afternoons drinking bottles of merlot. Just as she is hesitant to admit the financial strain she is feeling, Hildy dismisses her daughters' concern about her drinking as out of character.
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