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Better Housekeeping

2002, Movie, R, 90 mins

Better Housekeeping: Review

BETTER HOUSEKEEPING | BETTER HOUSEKEEPING! | GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
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Even if you count televised domestic brawls like The Jerry Springer Show among your secret vices, this loud and thoroughly obnoxious comedy about a pair of squabbling working-class spouses is a deeply unpleasant experience. With only two weeks to go before their divorce is finalized and their state of unholy matrimony put out of its misery, Don (Bob Mills) and Donatella (Petra Westen) continue to tear into each other, screaming at the top of their lungs and using their young son, Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner), as a go-between to ferry profanity laden threats and recriminations back and forth. Memorabilia-collector Don — his area of expertise appears to be action figure tie-ins to cheesy Charles Band movies — spends the day watching home shopping networks and fending off both fellow collectors, eager to get their hands on Don's incredibly rare "Black Tail Turtle" Beanie Baby, and his deadbeat brother, Chuck (Zia), who needs money and a place to crash so he can have sex with his junkie girlfriend, Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan). Donatella, meanwhile, has a job — she drives a forklift — and is having an affair with Marion (Tacey Adams), a straight-laced accountant who wants nothing more than to broker some sort of peace between husband and wife and take Donatella away from her house of horrors. Donatella returns home one night to discover that Don has erected a "freak barrier" across their kitchen, a makeshift wall intended to divide the house into separate his-and-her territories (with a little doggie door cut in the bottom for Don Jr.). Don organizes an all-night beer blast and invites his friends, including Joe (Al Schuermann), an ignorant and angry men's rights activist who thinks building the wall is "as American as it gets" and brings Don a rocket launcher. It inevitably goes off. Don and Donatella are both so angry it's nearly impossible to bear, but things devolve even further when Tiffany ODs and the boys suddenly have to find a Dumpster in which to hide her body. Ha ha. Aside from a rather perceptive look at the world of obsessive collecting (a subject ripe for satire), the film makes light of a miserable situation and its patronizing attitude toward its characters virtually defies comment. Originally titled "Good Housekeeping," the film underwent a last minute name-change after legal action was threatened by Hearst Publications, which understandably wanted nothing to do with it. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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