Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel

MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948)

Comedy-satire about the tribulations of big city executive (Cary Grant) and wife (Myrna Loy) when, trying to escape the confines of Manhattan apartment life, they try to build in the Connecticut countryside. Their lawyer and friend is Melvyn Douglas. I find the movie rather bland (as in Blandings) and not a special showcase for its stars. Douglas, a former fraternity beau of Loy's, starts out as cute, becomes annoyingly smug and his role gets ambiguous.

For an adman, Grant is too naive and too often made to look like a fool. Ever-charming Loy has rather little acting to do. The happy ending is patently phony . Then again, critics have praised this movie for its originality and sophistication, and variously called it "hilarious," "sharp", "slick" or "knowing". I do admit that the un-raucous confusion here is a nice change from movies of subsequent decades, and that "Mr. Blandings" is marginally interesting as a document on a certain post-WWII middle class. So on the whole this is fairly pleasant entertainment about unpleasantnesses. Written by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank from a popular novel by Eric Hodgkin. Directed by H. C. Potter. (Edwin Jahiel)