Life as a House (2001) on Netflix
George Monroe loses his job and learns his cancer is terminal. He tears down the family shack to build a house of his own and wants his son Sam to help.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.4/1047,605 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes47%
Trailer
Plot summary
George Monroe has spent twenty-five years alone in the rundown shack on the Southern California coast that his father left him. He works at an architectural firm building scale models, and he loses that job. The same day, a doctor tells him his cancer is advanced and that no treatment will help. He decides not to tell his family. With a few months left, he plans to knock the shack down and put up a house of his own design. He wants his son Sam, sixteen and living with his mother Robin Kimball and stepfather Peter Kimball, to spend the summer working on it with him. Sam had already arranged to stay in Tahoe with a friend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Life as a House (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When the film was finished, the house built for it was dismantled, moved, reconstructed and enlarged to become a library for the Kenter Canyon Elementary School in Brentwood.
- William Russ was originally cast as Kurt Walker but was replaced when he was injured in a motorcycle accident after filming had begun; a deleted scene with him survives on the DVD release.
- Production designer Dennis Washington had to build an entire street of houses leading to Sam's house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific at Palos Verdes, California. The new house was built on another site and transported to the set section by section, and the film had to be shot in sequence.
- On a DVD bonus feature, director Irwin Winkler confesses he never realized the rekindling love between George and Robin was a key aspect of the script until he saw the emotion Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas displayed in their scenes together.
- Reviewing for Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote that Christensen, soon to hit pinup status in Star Wars II and III as Anakin Skywalker, was a joy to watch, but that the film was less instructive about the tools of life than any episode of This Old House.
