Funny Farm (1988) on Netflix
Sportswriter Andy Farmer and his wife Elizabeth leave New York for a Vermont farm so he can write a novel. Their movers lose the furniture, and Redbud crowds in.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.2/1025,780 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes64%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sportswriter Andy Farmer leaves New York City with Elizabeth, his wife and a kindergarten teacher, for a farmhouse in Redbud, Vermont. He means to write a novel there, away from interruptions. Redbud supplies interruptions instead: the movers misplace the furniture, and the residents' habits and demands wear on the couple. A bill arrives for the funeral of Claude Musselman, a man buried on the property long before the Farmers bought it. Elizabeth reads Andy's manuscript and finds it wanting, while she works on stories of her own for children. The quiet Andy came for never arrives, and the marriage begins to strain.
Cast
- Caris Corfmanas Betsy Culbertson
- William Seversas Newspaper Editor
- Kit Le Feveras Young Operator (as Le Fevre)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Funny Farm (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were strong champions of the film, praising it on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and At the Movies; Ebert called it a "small miracle," while Siskel said it was "the best film Chase has made".
- Boam imagined the film "a little cruder, more low-brow humor, rougher and more like the movies Chevy was doing at the time", but said George was a classy guy who made it classy, leaving a lot of Chase's fans let down because it was not as raucous as they expected.
- The film grossed $25 million on a $19 million budget, a modest success seen as an overall disappointment: the Tom Hanks comedy Big opened the same day and became one of the year's highest-grossing films, while Crocodile Dundee II was in its second week.
- The movie was filmed between August and November 1987 on location in Vermont, mostly in Townshend; the New York City apartment at the beginning is the Apthorp at 2211 Broadway, and the house bought by the Farmers is on Fire Pond Road, Grafton.
- The film was adapted from a 1985 comedic novel of the same name by Jay Cronley, and it was the final film directed by George Roy Hill before his death in 2002.
