I remembered seeing this movie when I was quite young, one of the things I remembered about the film was that it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. So I sat down to watch with all the expectations of a ten year old. Unfortunately, I’m not ten anymore, and the humour in the film wasn’t as belly-laugh inducing as I had thought. It’s always interesting watching a film as an adult, that you loved as a child - and I think sometimes, your memories are best left to themselves.
So the movie… Walter Fielding Jnr. is a man struggling to pay of his playboy father’s debts, and is living with his fiance Anna. They are staying in her ex husband’s (Max the ‘Maestro’, played by Alexander Gudenov) apartment. He comes home early from an overseas stay and they are forced to find their own place. In desperation, they find a crazy old woman who is selling her million dollar mansion at the bargain price of $200,000. What a steal! So the happy couple move into the house with bright eye’s and bushy tails, only to find that the house is not what it seems.
What happens to Walter and Anna through the rest of the movie is a series of slapstick situations involving the house falling to pieces around them. All the while their relationship is failing at a similar rate as their frustration with the house’s never ending problems build to the point where they can no longer stand to be together.
Now while there are quite a few classic, funny moments in this film, I’m afraid it didn’t quite hold up for me. As the house steadily fell to pieces, I found my self caring less and less about the unhappy couple, hoping that the house would just hurry up and implode with the two of them inside - and I would have been happy for the very annoying Maestro to join them.
Overall a film with funny moments, though an unecessary amount of focus on a relationship that seemed to be nothing more than an attempt to fill in time between the ‘hilarious’ antics of the demon-house. Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh here - but I think my expectations were a bit too high and unforunately, the film didn’t quite come through for me.
Funny in places, and something you would expect from Tom Hanks in a mid 1980’s comedy role. Think ‘Big’ and ‘Splash’.

THE EXTRAS

Not much in the way of extras, though I think this is quite normal for movies filmed before the DVD era. The extra’s include:
The Making of The Money Pit
Theatrical Trailer
The making of featurette was vaguely interesting, though I can’t say I was watching that intently as by the time I had watched the movie I wasn’t really in the mood for watching more of them. As Making Of’s go, it was quite informative and showed alot of behind the scenes footage, including the conception and execution of one of the more complicated scenes in the movie where Tom Hanks falls and destroys a bunch of scaffolding.

CONCLUSION

One of Tom Hanks’ films from the 80’s, that I’m sure most people have seen or at least heard of. Also included in the cast is Shelley Long, who plays his fiance/wife Anna. A slapstick film where an unlucky and naiive couple buy, unbeknownst to them, a dilapidated mansion that steadily falls apart around them - testing their relationship and commitment to each other.