Jimmy Stewart was fifty-four when he made this film, and was just beginning to turn into everyone's idea of the perfect Grandpa, while Maureen O'Hara was forty-two and had undergone the transition from fiery young redhead every hot-blooded male would love to tame to mature woman with a touch of sophistication a little like the childhood friend's mother you secretly thought was hot. Together they should make a temperamentally incompatible screen couple but it is probably the scenes they share together that work best in this almost unbearably wholesome comedy.
Stewart plays the eponymous Mr. Hobbs, an harassed bank executive who's a little dismayed to discover the intimate vacation he had been expecting to spend with his wife has become a family get-together of daughters, son-in-laws and grandchildren. The location is a ramshackle old house on the Californian coast that a modern-day family wouldn't spend five minutes in but, with admirable fortitude they make the most of the place and its not long before it begins to feel like a home from home.
Nunally Johnson's script seems to spend most of its time skirting around its more adult strands the marriage difficulties of one daughter, and the roving eye of the other's husband and remains firmly on safer ground, such as the romance of Stewart's awkward brace-wearing daughter and Stewart's trials with stubborn pumps and tipsy guests. In fact, where John Saxon's part as the wayward husband is concerned, it looks suspiciously as if some major chunks of film were left on the cutting room floor. Perhaps the subject matter was considered too risky for a film that jumps through hoops to remain staunchly inoffensive and middle-of-the-road. Of course, there's nothing wrong with clean family fun, but why introduce these more adult strands into a film if you're not going to do anything with them?
Old Pros Stewart and O'Hara give typically reliable performances, although they both have to rely heavily on audience goodwill at times to see them through the slower stretches. John McGiver and Marie Wilson liven things up for a while as a drab couple with guilty secrets, while Fabian's beard probably provides the film's funniest moments, and the whole film benefits from being filmed on location. All in all, if you like gentle old-fashioned humour that makes no demands on the viewer other than a capacity to be easily pleased, you will enjoy this film.
One other thing: unless you enjoy watching a pair of apparently ownerless noses holding conversations from opposite ends of the screen I suggest you attempt to catch a widescreen print.
Stewart plays the eponymous Mr. Hobbs, an harassed bank executive who's a little dismayed to discover the intimate vacation he had been expecting to spend with his wife has become a family get-together of daughters, son-in-laws and grandchildren. The location is a ramshackle old house on the Californian coast that a modern-day family wouldn't spend five minutes in but, with admirable fortitude they make the most of the place and its not long before it begins to feel like a home from home.
Nunally Johnson's script seems to spend most of its time skirting around its more adult strands the marriage difficulties of one daughter, and the roving eye of the other's husband and remains firmly on safer ground, such as the romance of Stewart's awkward brace-wearing daughter and Stewart's trials with stubborn pumps and tipsy guests. In fact, where John Saxon's part as the wayward husband is concerned, it looks suspiciously as if some major chunks of film were left on the cutting room floor. Perhaps the subject matter was considered too risky for a film that jumps through hoops to remain staunchly inoffensive and middle-of-the-road. Of course, there's nothing wrong with clean family fun, but why introduce these more adult strands into a film if you're not going to do anything with them?
Old Pros Stewart and O'Hara give typically reliable performances, although they both have to rely heavily on audience goodwill at times to see them through the slower stretches. John McGiver and Marie Wilson liven things up for a while as a drab couple with guilty secrets, while Fabian's beard probably provides the film's funniest moments, and the whole film benefits from being filmed on location. All in all, if you like gentle old-fashioned humour that makes no demands on the viewer other than a capacity to be easily pleased, you will enjoy this film.
One other thing: unless you enjoy watching a pair of apparently ownerless noses holding conversations from opposite ends of the screen I suggest you attempt to catch a widescreen print.