"Actor: Christopher Durang"

• Housesitter | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £9.43   |  Saving you £0.56 (5.94%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A slick, smart vehicle for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, Housesitter offers an acceptably daffy premise and enough inventive business to sustain it through to the, not unexpected, happy ending. Architect Martin builds a dream home for his childhood sweetheart (Dana Delaney) only to be rejected when he proposes marriage. After a one-night stand, Hawn--a daffy waitress with a gift for making up improbable but convincing lies--moves into Martin's house and tells his parents (Donald Moffatt, Julie Harris) and the whole community that she is his surprise new wife. When he sees how this impresses Delaney, Martin goes along with the charade, encouraging wilder and wilder fictions and doing his best to join in so that he can rush through to a divorce and move on to the woman he has always wanted. Hawn has to recruit a couple of winos to pose as her parents and impress Martin's boss into giving him a promotion, but we glimpse her real misery at his eventual intention to toss her out of the make-believe world she has created because her own real background is so grim. Its sit-com hi-jinx are manic enough not to be strangled by an inevitable dip in to sentiment towards the end, and Hawn, who always has to work hard, is better matched against the apparently effortless Martin than in their subsequent pairing in Out-of-Towners. Martin, often wasted in comparatively straight roles, has a few wild and crazy scenes as Hawn prompts him into joining her improvised fantasies. Director Frank Oz, a frequent Martin collaborator (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger), is the model of a proper, competent, professional craftsman when he sets out to put a comedy together--but the film misses streaks of lunacy or cruelty that might have made it funnier and more affecting. On the DVD: The disc offers a pristine widescreen non-anamorphic transfer, letterboxed to 1.85:1. There are no extra features to speak of, just text-based production notes, cast and director bios, plus a trailer and an assortment of language and subtitle options. --Kim Newman

• The Butcher's Wife | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £8.08   |  Saving you £4.91 (37.80%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Marina (Demi Moore), a blonde Southern belle with a clairvoyant streak, sees signs--a shooting star with two tails, a snowglobe that washes up on the beach, a wedding band inside of a fish--telling her that her true love is about to come ashore. And soon enough, a boat lands on the beach in front of her home; only the guy inside is a stout butcher from New York City named Leo (George Dzundza). Still, portents are portents, and the next thing you know she's married and running barefoot around a butcher's shop in Greenwich Village, where she inspires various residents with her predictions. Leo, however, is frightened by his wife's abilities and encourages her to see Alex (Jeff Daniels), a psychiatrist who works across the street. To placate him, she does--and soon begins to suspect that she's misread her signs and married the wrong man. The Butcher's Wife could use a little more humour about Marina's powers (her pronouncements are dizzyingly earnest) but the movie is buoyed up by a fantastic supporting cast, particularly Margaret Colin as a soap opera actress, Frances McDormand as a lesbian dress shop owner and Mary Steenburgen as a dowdy church choir leader who just wants to sing the blues. Like Marina, you know what's going to happen but the cast manages to make getting there charming. --Bret Fetzer

• Housesitter | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A slick, smart vehicle for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, Housesitter offers an acceptably daffy premise and enough inventive business to sustain it through to the, not unexpected, happy ending. Architect Martin builds a dream home for his childhood sweetheart (Dana Delaney) only to be rejected when he proposes marriage. After a one-night stand, Hawn--a daffy waitress with a gift for making up improbable but convincing lies--moves into Martin's house and tells his parents (Donald Moffatt, Julie Harris) and the whole community that she is his surprise new wife. When he sees how this impresses Delaney, Martin goes along with the charade, encouraging wilder and wilder fictions and doing his best to join in so that he can rush through to a divorce and move on to the woman he has always wanted. Hawn has to recruit a couple of winos to pose as her parents and impress Martin's boss into giving him a promotion, but we glimpse her real misery at his eventual intention to toss her out of the make-believe world she has created because her own real background is so grim. Its sit-com hi-jinx are manic enough not to be strangled by an inevitable dip in to sentiment towards the end, and Hawn, who always has to work hard, is better matched against the apparently effortless Martin than in their subsequent pairing in Out-of-Towners. Martin, often wasted in comparatively straight roles, has a few wild and crazy scenes as Hawn prompts him into joining her improvised fantasies. Director Frank Oz, a frequent Martin collaborator (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger), is the model of a proper, competent, professional craftsman when he sets out to put a comedy together--but the film misses streaks of lunacy or cruelty that might have made it funnier and more affecting. On the DVD: The disc offers a pristine widescreen non-anamorphic transfer, letterboxed to 1.85:1. There are no extra features to speak of, just text-based production notes, cast and director bios, plus a trailer and an assortment of language and subtitle options. --Kim Newman