A Home of Our Own
Theatrical release poster
Directed byTony Bill
Written byPatrick Sheane Duncan
Produced byDale Pollock
Bill Borden
Starring
CinematographyJean Lépine
Edited byAxel Hubert
Music byMichael Convertino
Production
companies
Distributed byGramercy Pictures
Release dates
October 20, 1993 (Hamptons International Film Festival)[1]
November 5, 1993 (United States)
Running time
103 minutes
LanguageEnglish
Budget$7.5 million[2]
Box office$1.6 million[3]

A Home of Our Own is a 1993 American comedy drama film directed by Tony Bill, starring Kathy Bates and Edward Furlong. It is the story of a mother and her six children trying to establish a home in the small fictional town of Hankston, Idaho, in 1962.

Plot

Frances Lacey, a widow, works at a factory that produces potato chips. She is fired when one of the men gropes her, and she hits him in return. The same day, her son is brought home by the police, for stealing change from payphones, but they don't press charges. Shortly after this, Frances decides that Los Angeles is not the place to raise a family. She packs the kids up, sells everything they can't carry, and starts driving. She figures she'll know where she's going when she sees it. Their meager resources get them as far as Hankston, Idaho, where Frances spots the unfinished frame of a wood house a few miles outside town, across the road from Moon's Nursery. Finding that the proprietor of the nursery, Mr. Munimura, is the owner of the property, though virtually penniless, Frances proposes to buy it from him in exchange for work by her and her children, whom she collectively calls the "Lacey Tribe".

With winter approaching, the Laceys work hard to make the house habitable. Frances finds a job as a waitress in the coffee shop at a bowling alley in Hankston and puts every dollar she can spare into improvement of the house. Murray inadvertently burns the house down in the dead of winter, and the family loses everything they own.

The family is picking through the charred remains of the house when Frances finds their meager savings in a blackened jar. Hope is reborn for Frances, but eldest son Shayne angrily demands a reality check and even accuses her of putting her pride ahead of the family's needs. When rebuilding seems impossible, Mr. Munimura arrives with professional town folk and supplies to rebuild. Whether stubborn independent Frances likes it or not, rebuilding has started as Mr. Munimura gives her a comforting hug. Frances relents, but true to character, she states that all will be paid back. Toys, clothes, and blankets are also provided for the children. Frances only lets them build the house as far as it was before the fire. Shayne, narrating, says that it took them six months to finish the rest of the house, and four years to pay everyone back, but that it brought them all closer together as a family. Even though he hated Idaho at first, he still lives there, and has never been back to Los Angeles.

Cast

Production

Screenwriter Patrick Sheane Duncan based the story on his own childhood experience of moving from Los Angeles after his father was killed in a barroom brawl. Duncan's mother relocated all twelve of her children to Michigan where she found work as a fruit picker to sustain the family.[2]

Principal photography began on October 26, 1992, and concluded on December 19.[2] Parts of the film were shot in Heber, Wasatch Mountain State Park and Midvale, Utah.[4]

Critical reception

Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote, "This situation, set in the 1960s, could be the set-up for a sitcom, or a retread of an old Disney family yarn. It ends up being a lot more, partly because Kathy Bates brings a solid, no-nonsense clarity to what could have been a marshmallow role, and partly because the director, Tony Bill, is too smart to go for heart-wrenching payoffs until the very end of the film, when they work so well that I actually felt some tears in my eyes."[5] He concluded "This is not a great movie, but it has a big heart."[5]

Other reviews criticized the film for its overt sentimentality and manipulativeness.[1][6]

References

  1. 1 2 Levy, Emanuel (October 21, 1993). "A Home of Our Own". Variety. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "A Home of Our Own". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  3. ↑ "A Home of Our Own". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  4. ↑ D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 9781423605874.
  5. 1 2 Ebert, Roger (November 5, 1993). "A Home of Our Own". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  6. ↑ Black, Louis (November 12, 1993). "Movie Review: A Home of Our Own". Austin Chronicle. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
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