Ideal Home

Rich, argumentative gay couple Erasmus (Paul Coogan) and Paul (Paul Rudd) live the high life and with an extravagant lifestyle; the rewards of presenting a successful food show on TV and its producer respectively. They have a lovely home, lots of friends and generally life is good.

Literally walking into this one night during a dinner party is Bill (Jack Gore) Erasmus’s grandson; the one he never knew he had. He’s been left there by his son Beau (Jack McDorman) before he’s banged up in jail. This doesn’t suit anyone; Bill doesn’t want to be there while Erasmus and Paul are frankly enjoying their lives far too much. However, they have little choice but to take on responsibilities they had never contemplated, and inevitably their relationship starts to be affected.

This is all fairly familiar stuff that’s efficiently done and rattles through the clichés of child dumped on unprepared couple. The routine is well adhered to: confusion, adjustment, love and then…well that may just give things away!
Coogan and Rudd are fine as the bickering couple in spite of a tired, potty mouthed, script by writer and director Andrew Fleming. It’s not a total failure, there are some solid scenes the couple getting caught having sex is well played. Plus when they meet teachers and other parents are well observed. In particular the school parent’s parties where the couple’s sniping social snobbery comes into its own.

Having said that all in all its ultimately uninspiring stuff, there’s a slight attempt to get in to deeper areas but these come off as afterthoughts. There’s also the added annoyance of references to an American food chain that are lobbed in with breeze block subtlety. The films final montage sums up what this film is ultimately about and that’s to be supported, but it fundamentally fails as a consistent comedy.