Genre:
Comedy
Directed
by: Melville Shavelson
Starring:
Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda
Running
time: 111 minutes
Frank,
a recently detached widower Navy Officer, meets Helen, a widow herself. Between
the two of them, they have 18 kids. Is that too much baggage for two people to
start a life together? Maybe not.
This
film was the subject of a 2005 remake, starring Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo,
which I have recently reviewed on here.
With
Lucille Ball, we get a certain dose of “I Love Lucy” slapstick comedy here and
it feels a little over-the-top. It felt odd to see her in this kind of role,
and she seemed a little out of place to me. I simply didn’t feel the chemistry
between Ball and Fonda.
A
lot more emphasis was put in the original on getting these two characters
together. In the remake, they were high school sweethearts, but, in the
original, they are strangers. I think that bogged down the story in the
beginning, and it is a definite improvement the remake made in my opinion. Once
the ball started rolling, story-wise, it improved a bit, but there was too much
emphasis put on physical comedy and on illustrating the size of the family.
I
must say I was amazed by the level of comedy displayed considering the era the
film was made in. Some of the humor must have been seen as risqué at that point
in time. Overall, this is a very average film. Some cuteness involved, but
nothing memorable.
Rating:
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