Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation

source: Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation

It's the weirdest thing--Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is supposed to be a mild and funny satire of the harried company man who wants more than anything to preserve his family--as they grow up and grow distant--by bringing them all together for a summer vacation. Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Hara are the parents of, possibly, the dullest and most unappealing brood of "kids" I've seen. They make the acres of children in With Six You Get Eggroll and Cheaper By the Dozen look absolutely mesmerizing by comparison. And the parents are no better. O'Hara has very little to do, other than look as if she needs a gig with John Wayne (so that she will have something to do!) and Stewart looks as if he is chewing on bits of beach sand (when Jimmy wasn't funny, he really wasn't!). There's an ugly edge to his lines and his performance. It's almost as if you can see what might have been the real person under the actor. I don't know if Jimmy Stewart was a nice guy or a jerk, but there's a menace to Mr. Hobbs that makes the viewer squirm and sucks the vitality out of what few laughs the movie can deliver. I found the movie tedious and Jimmy's character almost sinister. MHTAV is a contrived and icky mess. But you know it made a gob of money 46 years ago. I taped the movie off AMC and showed it to my family a few weeks ago. Both wife and daughter laughed, a lot. What I took for sinister apparently still sells.

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.

In the 1960s, Jimmy Stewart did several family films that were just rather bland and, in my opinion, wasted his amazing talents. I am not saying they are BAD films, just imminently forgettable and are best described as "fluff". In other words, while time-passers, they have very little lasting value. The movie does have a few mildly funny moments but that's really about all. In fact, the only reason the film even gets a score of 6 is because Stewart is in the film and he tries his best with the mediocre material. My recommendation is do NOT run out and rent it or buy it but wait until it comes out on cable. This is a far cry from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE or MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. It's more like an episode of GIDGET combined with PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES.

There is nothing wrong or bad about this film; the cast is strong, and the writing acceptable. The problem, frankly, is that it is just not that interesting. However, if we approach this film without high expectations, then we can accept it for what it is: a mildly amusing movie that allows us to sit comfortably with two of our all-time favorite actors, Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Hara (although, to be honest, Maureen is not that interesting here either). So, if you love Jimmy Stewart, and want to make a point of seeing every movie he is in, then definitely watch this movie. But be prepared to have to put up with unappealing child actors, badly dated 1960's "teen scenes", and a number of other actors and actresses who we never particularly care about. Luckily, very few scenes indeed do not feature Jimmy Stewart. Well, I take some of that back; "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" is saved towards the end by the appearance of John McGiver and Marie Wilson as Mr. and Mrs. Turner, a business couple who make a point of being very dull. They are actually pretty funny, especially McGiver, and the scenes featuring these actors save the whole movie from being a completely dreary waste of time. To be fair, Fabian is not bad either, playing his role rather sympathetically; and the family's 1960 Dodge wagon, with its fantastically distinctive grill, is also cool to see. Particularly annoying is a lengthy sequence in which Jimmy Stewart and his son are piloting a sailboat out of a harbor; this they do with great difficulty, barely missing hitting other boats, and upsetting a water-skier. The problem is, Stewart and his boat are clearly sitting in front of a projection screen. Now I understand that it is much easier and cheaper to film scenes sometimes in front of a projection screen; scenes with people "walking down the street", when they are actually in front of a movie screen showing the sidewalk, are common and harmless enough. But here, the humor of the situation completely depends on us believing that Stewart is hardly able to control his boat, causing several near misses with other boats. The fakeness of the projection is so obvious that the whole scene is just a painfully long (over 2 minutes of this) debacle. The beach scenes are odd too. Valerie Varda, a Hungarian-born actress, has an accent that is definitely not Hungarian (I grew up surrounded by Hungarians, and can pick up the accent across a room). I don't know what the accent is, but it is very hard to follow; she had a blessedly short acting career after this film. John Saxon appears in a bathing suit, with a shockingly well-built body (if I may say so), and it appears that, though he is married to Jimmy Stewart's daughter, he is on the verge of having an affair with Varda; in the end, though, this idea is not pursued. One final note: when Stewart's family enters the massive yet run-down vacation house, Stewart goes to climb the stairs; as he takes the first step, he grabs the large knob on top of the railing, and it lifts right up. He stares at it a moment before replacing it; I have to believe that this moment was intended to pay some minor homage to "It's a Wonderful Life", where a similar stair-railing knob comes to symbolizes the crumminess of Stewart's home in that film.

Mr. Hobbs wants to take a nice quiet vacation to the beach for the summer but Mrs. Hobbs insists on taking the whole family, daughters, son-in-law, grandchildren, cook and various drop ins, with them. There goes his peaceful trip. The kind of role that Jimmy Stewart could play in his sleep but he and Maureen O'Hara manage to make the material better than it should be. They keep the whole enterprise moving along with some cute side stories, Fabian is charming as a suitor to their daughter who is going through growing pains not helped by her new braces and the distinctive presences of John McGiver and Marie Wilson contribute a bit of spice in small scenes of a supposedly straight laced couple who hold the key to a new job for Jimmy's son in law, John Saxon-looking particularly handsome here. Harmless fun and if you're a Stewart fan irresistible.

As of this writing, "Hobbs" is approaching it's fiftieth anniversary. I saw this for the first time in the summer of 1962 as a nine-year old and loved it then. I love it to this day. The film plays somewhat like a widescreen color sitcom made for the theater. It is episodic in nature, but hen so is "Auntie Mame", another favorite of mine. There are laugh-out-loud moments and quiet, heartwarming moments mixed in equal measure to produce a family film that is very satisfying to watch. The cast is uniformly good with special mention to John Macgiver and Marie Wilson as the hilarious Turners, and Minerva Urecal as the Hobbs' dragon-like housekeeper. James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara spark some real chemistry here, and the production is easy on the eyes with some lovely location shooting, and wrapped up in a classic Henry Mancini score that will leave you humming the title song.

I have said this before, but I have almost vowed myself to watch almost all film starring the lead male star, even if their low on star ratings, and I admit one or two of them have failed to get my absolute attention when watching them, and this is one of those. Basically Mr. Roger Hobbs (James Stewart) is asking his secretary to write a (long) letter about a vacation to his wife, and obviously then the film sees this vacation. Roger longed to take his family to the seashore, and when he, wife Peggy (Maureen O'Hara) and kids do get to the sand, problems develop with the house, and the vacation turns out to be a half-good half-bad trip. I can't remember laughing too much, even when I did see Stewart struggling to start some sort of pump motor, and I got confused with what was meant to be going on with him and those visitors. Also starring Fabian as Joe, Lauri Peters as Katey Hobbs, Lili Gentle as Janie, John Saxon as Byron, John McGiver as Mr. Martin Turner, Marie Wilson as Mrs. Emily Turner, Minerva Urecal as Brenda, Hobbs' Maid and Michael Burns as Danny Hobbs. Stewart had a similar look to those in Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much, because of the Fedora hat, that is one of the only memorable things in this film, apart from some tiny moments of mistakes, misunderstandings and chaos, this isn't really a fantastic Stewart film. Okay!

First, if you should find yourself awake for the sequence where Fabian and the 14 year sing 'Creampuff' make sure you're strapped down and have no sharp objects you will want to stick in your own eye. Stupid, stupid, nonsense. Maureen O'Hara is awful to start with but here she just makes things worse. One of the worst stories, worst casting, idiotic train wrecks a major studio put out in the 60's. And that included the final 5 movies of Doris Day. Poor Jimmy Stewart. Great actor. Poor career choice.

Good family comedy film that covers all the bases except editing.Slightly better screenplay to compliment the excellent writing would have turned this movie into a bonafide EXCELLENT CLASSIC.But despite it's small flaws,this movie will definitely delivers on it's genre's promise.Not for people who do not like any TEEN LOVE stories at all......