Yuppies in Peril was a real thing in the Nineties. And here we have the upwardly mobile unmarried Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine telling some fibs on their loan application to buy a fabulous Victorian fixer-upper in San Francisco. Their cunning plan is to rent out two apartments to finance their plan to make loadsamoney. Except Michael Keaton is the psycho who turns the place into a roach motel hoping to buy it for half nothing and if only they’d checked his bona fides a little earlier and watched their cat’s movements more closely … A fun blend of home invasion, Gordon Gekko’s mantra being given air, a horror version of Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House and a meta exercise in relations between Melanie and real-life Mom, Tippi Hedren, who’s Keaton’s next mark – we all know what happened to her in the Bay Area round about the time Hitchcock enticed her to a little avian entry. Now if only Modine didn’t turn out to be a bit of a psycho too. But Melanie has great fun ordering room service. Try it. You’ll like it. Think Rosemary’s Baby with a yen for dollars. Made, bizarrely, by John Schlesinger from a screenplay by Daniel Pyne.
mondomovies 