...because in many ways nothing has changed. If you can't live through what Mr. Blandings lives through in this film, don't do it! There at millions of already built homes in the United States! Pick one! Jim (Cary Grant) and Muriel (Myrna Loy) Blandings live in a Manhattan apartment with their two daughters and Jim is an advertising executive. So Jim and Muriel think it would be nice to live in the country on a big lot and buy - not sight unseen so much as site uninspected by professionals - a house in Connecticut that has been standing since the Continental Congress.
Unfortunately, every engineer who inspects it says it is a wonder of the modern world that it has not fallen down on its own, but of course it is not going to do that and make the Blandings' life easy, so they have pay to have it knocked down. Then they find out about an obscure law about knocking down a house that has a mortgage on it and have to pay 6000 dollars. And they haven't even gotten around to BUILDING the house they want! From the windowless bedroom, the logistics problems of getting to and from work - Mrs. Blandings read the train schedule wrong, getting trapped in the upstairs closet, to being forced to move before the house is ready - as in not having windows - this thing is hilarious on so many levels.
Jim Blandings' panic grows with the mounting bills, the misunderstandings that cost him thousands, and the ad campaign he must come up with to keep his job and have a chance at ever paying for any of this. Plus the stress has him imagining that his wife and attorney/friend (Melvyn Douglas as Bill Cole) are in love. They did go steady for a time during college, but that was it.
Now don't think that this is anything but a comedy. Plus I have never seen anybody who can play straight man to his own comedian as well as Cary Grant. Myrna Loy is sublime as the wife, completely unruffled by any of this, not a hair out of place. And she delivers the one liners as well as when she was Nora Charles. Melvyn Douglas is great as the friend and lends great deadpan comic support to the whole proceeding. Highly recommended.
Unfortunately, every engineer who inspects it says it is a wonder of the modern world that it has not fallen down on its own, but of course it is not going to do that and make the Blandings' life easy, so they have pay to have it knocked down. Then they find out about an obscure law about knocking down a house that has a mortgage on it and have to pay 6000 dollars. And they haven't even gotten around to BUILDING the house they want! From the windowless bedroom, the logistics problems of getting to and from work - Mrs. Blandings read the train schedule wrong, getting trapped in the upstairs closet, to being forced to move before the house is ready - as in not having windows - this thing is hilarious on so many levels.
Jim Blandings' panic grows with the mounting bills, the misunderstandings that cost him thousands, and the ad campaign he must come up with to keep his job and have a chance at ever paying for any of this. Plus the stress has him imagining that his wife and attorney/friend (Melvyn Douglas as Bill Cole) are in love. They did go steady for a time during college, but that was it.
Now don't think that this is anything but a comedy. Plus I have never seen anybody who can play straight man to his own comedian as well as Cary Grant. Myrna Loy is sublime as the wife, completely unruffled by any of this, not a hair out of place. And she delivers the one liners as well as when she was Nora Charles. Melvyn Douglas is great as the friend and lends great deadpan comic support to the whole proceeding. Highly recommended.