[6]

Tom Hanks and Shelley Long star as an engaged couple who make a hasty mansion purchase, only to discover the building is falling apart and needs more repairs than they can likely afford. The Money Pit takes about twenty minutes to get going, but once the house starts falling apart on Hanks and Long, it’s cute enough. There are a couple of fun Rube Goldberg-esque sequences where one bad thing leads to an exponentially worse one, and Hanks is especially memorable in a sequence in which he is swallowed and constrained by a hole in the floor. The third act is built around an insipid charge of infidelity between the lovers, but The Money Pit is wisely a short movie that favors its second act shenanigans. With Maureen Stapleton, Joe Mantegna, Yakov Smirnoff, Philip Bosco, and Alexander Godunov. Directed by Richard Benjamin (Mermaids, My Stepmother is an Alien).