As i watched "Open House", i found myself laughing numerous times, and not from the genuine humor. No better way to cheapen sex, folks, than to call it a "fire in your belly". The kid is not as all convincing in the minutiae of how they really live today in the suburbs. The baseball cards, dinosaur models and other baby boom items the live-in home refugee knocks off the shelves are not, i tell you what you would find for the most part. The movie earns the IMDB genre designation "musical" because of the usual passel of songs interspersed on the soundtrack. Anyway, the plot. A single woman moves into a new house with her preteen son after her ex marries another (as always caricaturishly bimboish) woman. The woman is named Samantha Morrow and her kid is Travis, her ex being the ever-so-subtly named King. She runs around lamenting her finances and preaching cheesy sentimental novel thrift and gratitude, takes bubblebaths and calls men names in the usual thread of overacting. The mover who Samantha takes a liking to is Colin Cowie II, really and truly. The Asian teenager with her pitiful broken-home upbringing (i say my following statements in sarcastic satire as i beleive there to be much latent racism in this offering) Lavender Blue (heh, heh) slowly overcomes her whiny ungrateful little teenage hormonitude (i know that"s not a word. Lavender Blue is the one who, after a curiously forced scene of the kid complaining about not having time for little things like knowledge, recreation, etc. and that is the one where the she decks the toys and regales us with her broken Asian home tale. Situations like those in "Better Luck Tomorrow" aside, i think we all know very well that image is a little off. There's also a cliched scene where Sam gets to rant the same. There are no black characters (except perhaps in some minute parts) and i'm not faulting them for that since this probably just isn't the kind of suburb where they would usually live. And Samantha has a "friend", Lydia who carries out a Hispanic madam former broad routine as she goes through love for a second time (after her obligatory failure at attracting the right fella to pay the bills). At times i half expected her (being played by Rita Moreno) to "belt out" something Lawrence-Welky (and i live with an old person so don't think i don't know what i'm talking about) like "I'm gonna let it shine" which i beleive is every fundamentalist and racist's favorite gospel songs (sing with me now, Sen. Lott!). It was filled with this sort of stereotyping, which was, i'll grant them well concealed, so i was usually laughing when not offended (I'm white}. There were also many illogical moments like (since they've gotta keep it a PG miniseries) the cut from when she's in the back seat of a woody with a man doing nothing happening to her saying (behold future bestseller writers) "men are pigs including you". Smart. And the wedding reception, complete with either badly choreographed or just plain bad dancing 'round the punch table, seemed to be composed of primarily the 40+ crowd with, amazingly, only two exceptions (the teen and the kid of course). Again the kid carried the not-so-high fashion of toys (i half-expected him to play the Game of States) which gave me so many chuckles. Anyway it never made feel as much as it made me raise my eyebrow and laugh at its pure corniness. 2003 CBS (imagine that) TV-movie.
Review of Open House
