I can remember how unbelievably excited we were to watch this movie after Disney had been doing their usual hype over it's new movies. I watched Disney all the time at this age and my best friend did too. I can remember way back when I still in 6th grade when this movie came out. Smart House was a clever idea for a family film, nicely packaged by the folks at The Magic Kingdom. Several centuries later all the kinks got worked out and the Starship Enterprise certainly didn't need a mother figure supervising the crew's every needs. It's a lot of laughs and then gets a bit frightening when Sagal materializes as a holograph and shuts the place down. Merriman downloads some old family television shows to give PAT an idea of what the ideal mother is like. Especially Merriman who misses his mother and is jealous of computer woman Jessica Steen who runs PAT's support systems and who Kilner starts showing an interest in. Kilner has other needs however that Pat can't supply and that his kids can't understand. It even helps Kilner organize his work so he can stay at home most of the time.

It's even got a name like HAL, PAT in this case.

All with the cheery voice of that ultimate mother figure, Katey Sagal. It cleans up after itself, cooks meals, makes beds, etc. Kevin Kilner and his son Ryan Merriman and daughter Angie Volding are the Cooper family and they win moving into a house that is completely computer controlled. But like HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey or Colossus, The Forbin Project the super artificial brain starts to take over everything. This involves a family winning a contest to live as guinea pigs in a futuristic house that is completely computer controlled. One of the more clever Disney television movies is definitely Smart House. Overall this is not really worth your time as it is something 'The Simpsons' managed to do in 30 minutes and even their version seemed more realistic and less insulting than this.

No Disney Original Movie is going to be very good and this follows all the clichés - bad actors, bad script, inept director at the helm (probably a TV veteran and first-timer when it comes to film-making). Ryan Merriman plays the whiz-kid genius who wanted to win the house, then decides, 'Hey, Dad, maybe we shouldn't have moved in here'.after having complained about wanting to throughout the entire beginning of the film. In this case the glitch is a visual representation of a woman who seems to think she's the mother of the new family that's moved in.she takes control of their lives and locks them inside the house. This aired on Disney a few years back as one of their infamous 'Original Movies.' The concept is something from a 'Simpsons' Halloween episode: a computer home is won by a family and they move in only to find their lives dominated by a glitch in the system.

Smart House by Audrey Lusk