Wednesday, January 25, 2012

MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948)

I love both Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, so you would think the pairing of them together would be a sure sign of a hilarious movie. Well it's not. MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE has numerous funny moments, but the thing that turned me off overall to the movie was the fact that Blandings has a job where he apparently does nothing but can still afford to not only support a wife and two kids but also afford a maid and build a gigantic house at a grossly overinflated price! It bothered the shit out of me. I don't know jack about the advertising business (except that the majority of commercials I see make me want to kill the entire human race), but Blandings has a job where he's given the assignment of coming up with a new slogan for a ham company and he's given six fucking months to do it!!!!!!! You're telling me this guy is getting paid enough money to live like a fucking king because he can come up with a slogan every six months!?!! What the fuck? It's all I could think about the entire movie.

OK, OK, let's forget about the whole money grows on tree aspect of the story and just focus on the comedy...ehh, it's alright. Unfortunately, most of the jokes focus on the different ways that Blandings is getting ripped off. Example: the guy he's paying to discover water for his well is paid by the foot, so the joke is the well digger guy has to dig over 200 feet down to discover water while the house construction guys only have to dig down 6 feet to discover a spring that ends up flooding the basement. Hardy-har-har. If that kind of stuff gets you to knee-slapping then MBBHDH is the movie for you. I kinda found it more depressing than funny.

Not a bad movie, but I think you'd better off watching GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE which has a very similar story, but actually funny.