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Housesitter (1992) is preposterous in the type of way that makes sure you never really accept its premise. But its preposterousness is also of a kind that reminds you, positively, of the great screwball comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s. You don’t mind — might even find some pleasure in — how logically wiggy everything is because the performances serving the wigginess are blessed with once-in-a-generation comic timing, and the comic hijinks are, in general, inspired. 

Housesitter is in no way as good as progenitors like Design for Living (1935) or Bringing Up Baby (1938). But it’s similarly adept at manufacturing chaos. It goes down easy. Design for Living and Bringing Up Baby rested on the shoulders of kooky, almost frighteningly assertive women functioning as cyclones to the men in their lives. Housesitter’s equivalent is a blonde named Gwen (Goldie Hawn). We first meet her working at a Hungarian-themed restaurant in Boston. There she crosses paths with the film’s protagonist — a stuffy architect named Newton (Steve Martin) still reeling from the rejected proposal from his girlfriend, Becky (Dana Delany), three months ago — and it isn’t until after they’ve had a one-night stand that Gwen announces herself someone Newton ought not to have gotten involved with.

Part of the reason Becky rejected Newton’s proposal is that he tied it up in the reveal that he built a house for them to live in together in an idyllic New England village near the home in which he grew up. Newton says as much to Gwen, and, spurred probably by a combination of wanting to take advantage of fancy free real estate and get petty revenge on the man who left her alone in bed, she decides to move in. (She figures out where the house is just based on a sketch Newton draws on a napkin at the restaurant.) Gwen furnishes it, buys groceries for it — all on ledgers she starts in Newton’s name — and then audaciously introduces herself to both Newton’s parents and to Becky as Newton’s new wife. Her lies are outrageous, but the way Hawn spins them turns what’s objectively troubling into genuine laughs.

Newton is, of course, outraged when he finds out what this pathological liar he never thought he’d see again has been spewing. He christens her the “Ernest Hemingway of bullshit.” But he’ll start to think she’s not so bad when her lying gets him a promotion, and also closer to getting back into Becky’s arms. You figure that Newton and Becky will likely get back together; it’s not like she’s done anything wrong besides reasonably having reservations about a pretty manipulative gesture. But it turns out that Housesitter is an enemies-to-lovers movie, where the things both parties in the soon-to-be romance at one time found exhausting about each other turn endearing.

Martin and Hawn don’t have much romantic chemistry. This becomes especially clear when we get to the end of the film and are too surprised by their coupling to be that jazzed about it. (As some consolation, Housesitter does have a laugh-out-loud-funny final line.) But they do have undeniable comic chemistry. Housesitter is best in the scenes where Gwen is spitting out crazy fibs in front of people and Newton has to frantically find a way to respond to them in a way that makes him seem reasonable and not like something of a captive. 

Martin is a terrific straight man to Hawn’s wild woman. In Housesitter, Hawn gives one of her funniest performances through a role that could have, with a less inspired actress in the part, come across as a not-that-sympathetic Manic Pixie Dream Girl type. Though we do get some emotional explanation as to why she is the way she is, it’s true that Gwen still isn’t necessarily that sympathetic. But there’s a lot of fun had in watching her set everything on fire without any second-guessing. Hawn has the kind of star power that makes you want to hand her the box of matches.