The Money Pit
March 26, 1986 in theaters
A young couple buys a sprawling country estate at a price too good to be true, then discovers why — the house is a structural disaster that devours their savings, sanity, and relationship one catastrophe at a time. The 1986 comedy builds its laughs through physical escalation, with Tom Hanks trying to stay reasonable as everything collapses.
Cast
Director
TRAILER
QUOTE
"Two weeks."
DID YOU KNOW?
The Money Pit was loosely inspired by the 1948 Cary Grant comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.
THE VERDICT
Synthesized from published reviews
The Money Pit is a comedy of compounding misery — each disaster slightly worse than the last, the house always one step ahead of the people trying to fix it, and Tom Hanks finding a laugh in every new collapse. The film's genius is structural: it commits to the escalation fully and trusts the audience to stay invested in the couple even as the situation becomes absurd. Hanks and Shelley Long are matched well, their relationship stress making the comedy feel rooted in something real. A film that understands that the funniest thing is watching a reasonable person try to stay reasonable in an unreasonable situation.
GALLERY
VIDEOS
