MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION (1962) **1/2 I know it's just a movie, and it's supposed to be (and is) funny, but they do go out of their way to hit some realism, and they do. The problem is the part of realism that their sweeping light illuminates but they don't even notice. Jimmy Stewart is a successful businessman, and a very good person without being particularly saintly [the way he does], but he mainly just needs to unwind. There's a lot of stuff that stresses him out and distracts him... I mean, he's healthy and so is everyone in his family, but he's all caught up in who's mad and who's employed and what everyone's up to that he can control only so much (and he does, slyly, in a good way), but. Well, he's married to Maureen O'Hara but he seems to only relate to her in a triangular manner relating to what's going on with everyone else. He's worried that his kid watches television too much, but how has someone failed to even let the kid know that he (Jimmy) knows all about baseball? His daughters brush to and fro-mysteries that are fond of him-but he never offers them an opportunity to do much besides just brush past. And this is while he's on vacation! What can life be like when he's engaged in the demanding world of commerce? I'm not saying that our culture offers the worst framework for effective and engaged fatherhood, I'm just saying that we're squandering a rare historical opportunity. Minerva Urecal is amusing as the crusty old Finnish wicked witch of a maid, but the heavy artillery is unquestionably John McGiver in full pompous plume. Everyone means well, it's nothing to get mad at, but there's plenty of room to look at opportunities missed. Kind of like real life, I guess, but it's nice to keep the regularity and magnitude a little lower than this. As far as movies go, the writers got a lot of plots going early, then decided that none of them were interesting enough to develop. It may not have been a bad move, as the series of skits moves along nicely, and the fact that it's all disjoined and without particular resolution adds to the realism that they were after in the first place.
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