Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Young siblings David, Elizabeth, and Robert are trying to come to terms with their mother's death. They are forced to live with their estranged father Tom Winters (Cary Grant) in Washington, D.C. At a concert festival, Robert gets lost and befriended by Cinzia Zaccardi (Sophia Loren). She comes after fighting with her overbearing conductor father. The kids force Tom to hire her as their new maid. Their vacation starts badly when their house is run over by a train. They're given an old houseboat instead.There're a lot of slapping for a romance movie and they're no small swipes. It's a little slower at first. With the arrival of Loren into the group, the movie picks up with more comedy. I'm not sure if Loren and Grant had other rom-coms. His straight-laced and her exotic presence make for a good on-screen pairing although their off-screen pairing may have been more dramatic. It's an interesting what-if in Hollywood casting.

"Houseboat" proves that being a Cary Grant film is NOT a guarantee for entertainment. This film simply does not work. It feels odd for many reasons. It is said that Grant was once in love with his co-star Sophia Loren and, since she married Carlo Ponti, he did not want to make this film. This is likely to be true because there are only a few love scenes and they all look somehow forced. He looks quite unhappy in most scenes with her and she, although pretty to look at, also seems to be inhibited to be close to him. At one point of the film I started to wish that he would marry his sister-in-law instead. That would have made more sense.But these personal riffs are not the only reason why the film falls flat on the face. The screenplay is to blame for most of the problems. The story cannot decide between being a serious approach about parental problems, in particular widowed fathers who have lost contact to their children, and a lighthearted comedy about a father of three getting an Italian housekeeper who is too pretty to be ignored and shows the father how to treat children well.If that would not be enough there is a sister-in-law, quite nice and pretty too, and loved by the children as well, who is madly in love with Grant and he seems to like her too. And there is Sophia's father, a famous Italian conductor, who is a cardboard-type of Italian protective parent. What is very annoying too, is, there is a lot of harsh language on all sides, fathers, children, ladies and others and two incidents of slapping faces, both without real reason and therefore the more surprising and even shocking.The whole thing probably could have been handled well in the hands of an experienced director, like Stanley Donen or Blake Edwards, who have an ear for bad dialogue, and there is plenty of this in the film. But Melville Shavelson was definitely the wrong guy to steer this project. Many scenes are wasted by discussing things over and over again, but no good points are made. And it looks like Grant REALLY felt uncomfortable with the kids.As other reviewers already pointed out, there are so many visual faults: 1. The house on the railway tracks run down by a train, and we don't see the impact, just a few splinters flying towards Cary Grant; 2. The houseboat, completely wasted as a source for fun; 3. Too many badly done rear projection and "outdoor" studio settings; 4. and the worst, the strange complexion of Sofia Loren, she looks so dark as if she were an African American. And much too old, although she was 24 at the time! And then there are these awful texts the children had to say, they constantly talk and act like diminutive grown-ups!The whole film has an unsatisfactory, even sick feeling, as if you watch people constantly making the wrong decisions and the happy end never felt so wrong as in this film. Sorry folks who admire this film, but this had to be said. Fully agree with the author of WRONG WIFE.

Aside from his Hitchcock movies and "Charade," this is virtually the only watchable movie Cary Grant made after 1944. It's really just one more of the bland family-friendly sitcoms that blight his later career, but more interesting than most for a couple of reasons. One is the passel of motherless kids, who for a change are convincingly sullen, bitter and unreachable until a brief last-minute conversion. The other is the presence of Sophia Loren -- raw-boned, gauche, gorgeous, and in real life determined not to become the fourth Mrs. Grant. The movie is contrived and totally unconvincing, but the two stars' tortured feelings for each other keep seeping through, giving many scenes an edgy tension you can't shake off. Loren's artless singing of the fine ballad "Almost in Your Arms" is haunting; their subsequent dance has an emotional fierceness that practically burns a hole in the screen.

I agree with "WRONG WIFE" post. A train hits their new home-in-tow and instead of a collision the viewer just sees some (fake) lumber thrown onto their car. The other stupid stunt is that Cary Grant is dressed in a dapper white tuxedo and walks along the gangway to the houseboat for the first time. It breaks under his weight. He sinks, but the shot is above the water so we just see his silly "woops I am sinking" expression. We don't see him sink into the water. In the very next scene he is completely clean and dry-wearing the same white tux. The houseboat itself is equally artificial. It looks a mess at first. But with a little paint, and some Hollywood magic dust, all of a sudden it appears to be a typical, cozy, middle class home. Equally puzzling is the scene where the houseboat drifts off at high tide and anchors onto the edge of an island. The guy they bought the houseboat from cruises up to it in his speedboat. Cary Grant is stranded, late for work. The guy shrugs and tells Grant that he will need to wait till high tide to get the houseboat towed back, before he can get to his job. Why didn't the guy just give him a ride to shore on his speedboat? I also agree the kids were annoying and shallow and not worthy of Sophia's attention.