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Big Fancy House / Film

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Examples of Big Fancy House in film.
  • A Wedding (1978): The Corelli/Sloan family has a very large mansion with a replica of an Italian restaurant in the basement.
  • Our Miss Brooks:
    • Mr. Whipple, in the episode of the same name, lives in a mansion guarded by vicious dogs.
    • In the cinematic series finale the Nolans live in a large mansion, complete with a butler and additional servants.
  • Frank Lucas, drug kingpin, buys one for his mother in American Gangster:
    Mrs. Lucas: ...And whose house is that, Franky?
    Frank Lucas: That is your house Mama!
    Mrs. Lucas: My house! ...and who else's?!
  • Batman (1989): As in most Batman adaptations, Wayne Manor is a huge, opulent mansion that's housed generations of Fiction 500 billionaires. Lampshaded when Bruce Wayne entertains Vicky Vale in a richly appointed dining room with plenty of Table Space:
    Bruce: You want to know the truth? I don't know if I've ever been in this room before.
  • Wayne Manor in Batman Begins is one of these, what with the Batcave in the basement/surrounding caves. However, it burns down, forcing Bruce to move to just a Cool House — though considering that it's a penthouse floor with a helicopter landing pad and a hidden room with a spare batsuit and equipment, it may qualify as another Big Fancy House.
  • Berkshire County: Kylie is impressed by the Harrisons' house when she first sees it. It's so big it wraps half-way around the driveway, and in the corner is a tower that the kids presumably use as their bedroom (the room is round).
  • The mansion in Eyes Wide Shut that Bill bluffs his way into once he gets the password from a friend. Of course, the fact that it's gigantic isn't as impressive as the Black Mass-esque ceremony culminating with an orgy in every single room.
  • Nicholas in The Game (1997) has a palatial residence that he presumably inherited from his father, and he is also fabulously wealthy. Apart from his servants, he lives there alone.
  • Many of J. Paul Getty’s scenes in All the Money in the World take place in Sutton Place, his 16th-century Tudor estate. It is filled with expensive art.
  • Jodie Foster's character in Panic Room buys a big, brownstone rowhome in Manhattan for her daughter and herself while she goes to study at Columbia. It's a bit of a spooky place, large for two people, and featuring the title safe room. The real estate agent seems curious about how she expects to afford it and it's revealed that she was formerly married to the chairman of a pharmaceutical company.
  • In A Good Year, the aggressive London stockbroker Max Skinner inherits a beautiful vineyard-estate in Provence from his uncle. Acting on his normal instincts, he prepares to sell the place and make a pretty penny but eventually falls in love and gives up his old lifestyle in favor of a quieter life in France.
  • The title country estate of Sir William McCordle in Gosford Park.
  • Fanny and Alexander has the Ekhdahl family mansion, an enormous home filled with ornate furniture, paintings, statuary, huge dining tables. It's like a life-sized fancy dollhouse, and contrasts strongly with the ominously stark Vergerus house that the kids get stuck in after their mother remarries.
  • Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Croft Manor in the film adaptations of the video game franchise. 87 rooms. Eighty. Seven. And a trailer out front for Bryce.
  • The mansion of The Haunting (1963). The massive sets were appropriately housed in the hanger for the Spruce Goose, the largest wooden airplane ever built.
  • Iron Man: Tony Stark's pad. If this doesn't count, this whole page is a lie.
  • In I Know Where I'm Going!, the Robinsons live in a castle, specifically the castle of Sorne.
  • Xanadu from Citizen Kane.
    • Possibly a deconstruction. Xanadu was too big, and its massive halls too empty. It was symbolic of Kane himself, opulent and garish, but devoid of anything that actually mattered.
  • The McCallister house in the first two Home Alone films.
  • The Corleone houses in The Godfather. The most luxurious being the one at Lake Tahoe.
    • Also the film producer's California mansion in the first Godfather.
  • Tony Montana's Florida mansion in Scarface (1983).
  • Tara Plantation in Gone with the Wind.
    • Mostly averted in the book, where the house is described as a graciously decorated but somewhat haphazard structure valuable mainly for the farmland it sits on, and important mainly because of the emotional connection the protagonist feels toward it.
    • The house that Scarlett has built in Atlanta when she marries Rhett may count, although Rhett never loses an opportunity to describe how grotesque the place is.
  • The plantation in Song of the South.
  • Adam Kesher has one of these in Mulholland Dr. — a road famous for its Big Fancy Houses.
  • Ilam, home of the Hulmes, in Heavenly Creatures.
  • Mr. Brooks has one, complete with his own pottery studio/hidden serial killer equipment closets.
  • The mansion of Bill Murray in Zombieland.
  • In The Matrix Reloaded, the Merovingian lives in one of these. In addition to the "usual" lavishly decorated hallways, Wall of Weapons, and prison located behind a secret bookcase, it also has doors which lead directly into the City as well as a private garage. Noteworthy here because the house is actually located 500 miles away from the city in the mountains (open the doors normally and you go outside into the mountain area, open them with a special key and you enter the city.)
  • John has such a house in Knowing, a huge, rambling, half-ruined place that he was fixing up. He stopped when his wife died.
  • In Parking (1985), as part of his world-renowned status, Orpheus lives in a castle along with Eurydice, Calais, Aristaeus, and several servants.
  • Glourie castle from the film The Ghost Goes West.
  • The Balls' mansion in Easy Living.
  • The Pottsdorf palace in The Great Race.
  • The Seton mansion in Holiday.
  • Amanda's and Graham's houses in The Holiday.
  • The Lord estate in The Philadelphia Story.
    • Hundreds Hall in Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger used to be this, but it's fallen into disrepair by the time the movie takes place.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • X-Men: First Class: When the team first arrives at Charles' residence, Erik, Sean, Alex, Moira and Hank have to tilt their head back a little to stare at the impressively large Xavier mansion, which practically looks like a small palace. It's even sarcastically lampshaded by Erik: "Honestly Charles, I don't know how you survived, living in such hardship."
    • X-Men: Apocalypse: The Xavier estate has never looked more beautiful on the silver screen—it's one of the most (if not the most) breathtaking, old-fashioned residences in cinema. It's practically a five-star hotel for mutants! The land around it is vast, lush and green, and one of its highlights is a stone-lined lake.
  • The titular Skyfall turns out to be this, though it isn't all that fancy.
  • In Spectre, the newly formed Joint Intelligence Service is head quartered in the Centre for National Security, a brand new (and privately funded) skyscraper intended to replace the damaged MI6 building.
  • Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni has a finale set in an elaborate modernist mansion carved into the rock of the Arizona desert in a Frank Lloyd Wright Zeerust design.
  • The manor house the Leonides' reside in in Crooked House. Interestingly, all of the characters have decorated their personal quarters in radically different styles, meaning there is no internal consistency, fitting the 'Crooked House' theme of the film.
  • Parasite (2019): The Parks live in a lavish, spacious, modern house, specifically designed by a famous architect. In contrast, the Kims live in a cramped semi-basement.
  • Killer Dream Home: 1128 Maple Drive - the 'dream home' of the title - is a lavish mansion estate complete with a guest house, home cinema, outdoor swimming pool and multiple bedrooms. And an elevator - which gets referred to many times during the movie.
  • Knives Out takes place at the manor of mystery writer Harlan, a huge gothic mansion that one detective openly compares to "living inside a Clue board." To hear the family tell it, the place was built from the ground up by some ancestor and theirs for generations but (as with so much about their "self-made" wealth), the truth is different: When Ransom snaps to Marta that "we won't let you steal our ancestral home," detective Blanc literally laughs "Ancestral? Your daddy bought this from a Pakistani millionaire in the 1980s!"
  • In Body, Cali takes her friends to a beautiful mansion that she says belongs to her rich uncle who is a hedge fund manager. However, it turns out that the house actually belongs to a family she used to babysit for and they are in fact trespassing.
  • Wealthy land developer George Merchant's mansion in Hot Fuzz, which is hardly in keeping with the village's rustic aesthetic and which gets him murdered.
  • The Invitation (2022) is set at a lavish manor in the British countryside.
  • Bodies Bodies Bodies is entirely set at a mansion that belongs to the movie's main victim.
  • All My Friends Hate Me: The film takes place at a big country house once owned by George's father.
  • Glass Onion: The Glass Onion, Miles' luxurious estate on a Greek private island. Lavishly designed guest rooms, lush gardens surrounding an infinity pool, a living/dining room filled with expensive pieces of art, and a private gym coached by Serena Williams, all powered by a state-of-the-art energy source. Also lampshaded; he says it's much more than a "rich asshole house".
  • Violent Night is mainly set on the estate of the Lightstone family, which houses a luxurious mansion stated to be one of the most secure private residences in the country.
  • Cruz Diablo: The palace of the Count of Luna, complete with dungeons and Secret Passages. The setting was praised in its day for how well made it was.
  • Beau Is Afraid: Mona's lakeside mansion is an isolated, high-ceiling, mid-century estate with an indoor garden. It's huuuuuuuuuge!

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