The Long, Long Trailer

This is a good movie for Lucy fans and for those who miss the sweetly innocent comedies of the 1950's. It's a nice vehicle for Lucy and Desi who were then at the peak of their TV popularity. The characters they play in the film are just slight variations on the Ricardos (Lucy and Ricky become Tacy and Nicky). They are newlyweds who set off across America in...well, the title gives it away...in a long, long trailer. The main problem with the movie is that's all that it's about. There is virtually no plot, nor even the oddball vignettes that you normally find in a road movie of this sort. There are a couple of good comic moments for Lucy, and she sure looks cute in some of those vintage 50s outfits. Minnelli directs well (I especially like his use of color), but without a plot, there's only so much he can do. Still, it's a sweetly nostalgic movie to see, short and painless.

This movie really needs to come out on DVD and sooooon!!!! it is one of the best funny movies out there. I have been seeing lucy movies and shows since i was a yourg boy. I love the classics, you did not need special effects for it to be a good movie. Don't get me wrong i love the new ones but the classics rule!! so i hope the Long,long Trailer comes out on DVD soon for everyone to enjoy. Those movies from yesteryear will always be king of movies. the stars can be compared with a lot of today starts if you look carefully at movie stars today. Kevin costner is our steve mc queen and so on. funny how life is reborn in different ways. Just need to look closer when we have our eyes open! thank you to who ever may care to be reading this.

In the midst of their wildly successful run through "I Love Lucy," Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made a movie. In "The Long, Long Trailer" they play newlyweds Nicky and Tacy. Nicky's job apparently requires him to travel a lot, and Tacy comes up with the idea of buying a trailer as their new home so that she can accompany him wherever he goes - and what a trailer. It's a beast. It's huge. And Tacy doesn't seem to understand the challenge involved in pulling the thing around the country. The basic story revolves around the fact that the purchase of this trailer almost destroys Nicky and Tacy's new marriage. Much of the humour in this revolves around the trials of driving with the trailer hooked to the car. The movie for the most part lacks the slapstick kind of humour that "I Love Lucy" was famous for - with perhaps the exception of a scene in which Tacy tries to cook in the trailer while Nicky is driving. Watching Nicky try to back the trailer into the driveway of Tacy's uncle and aunt's house and almost destroying the house is also quite funny. Otherwise, the humour is lower key than you'd expect, and the movie is sometimes even tense. The scenes in which Nicky has to pull the trailer up a long and windy mountain road is actually rather unsettling. This certainly isn't as good as "I Love Lucy" but in its own way it's fun, and lets us see Lucy and Desi doing something a little different. (6/10)

I absolutely was disgusted by how annoying this entire movie was. Is it supposed to be funny? Was this entertaining in the 50s!?! I have no idea, I was totally annoyed with the entitled privileged wife and her nonsense paired with a "yes dear no matter how stupid" husband. Solid 5 because I actually watched this entire movie and my husband heard me yelling the entire time.

Thanks to IMDb, I never realized Vincente Minnelli directed this film! Riding high on the popularity of "I Love Lucy," this film is essentially Lucy and Ricky on the road, "disguised" as Nicki and Tacy. Whoever they might be called, this film is fun. Too bad they didn't include a cameo of Ted and Elsie too! I think that Minnelli perfectly captured the enthusiasm of "America in the Road" during the 1950s with its fascination for travel. The comedy seems rather stilted at times, perhaps because it wasn't filmed in front of a live studio audience, and there are no really big laugh out loud moments. Still, the movie is a neat little gem from the carefree 50s when all we had to worry about was keeping up with the Jones'.

Newlyweds sink all their money into a home on wheels; it almost sinks their marriage. One can sense that Clinton Twiss' book was re-conceived with stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in mind--it feels tailored to them both as a real-life couple and as their "I Love Lucy" counterparts the Ricardos. However, their characters here--Tacy and Nicky Collini--aren't as interesting or as dimensional as either the Arnazs or the Ricardos, and director Vincente Minnelli sets up laughs which never come. Some of the slapstick is indeed colorful or visually amusing, but these bickering sweethearts are awfully selfish, and no one they meet on their journey is able to lighten the load. Bits and pieces of it are sprightly, but this comedy about marital discord is far too prickly (and truthful) to yield big success as a rollicking romance on the open road. ** from ****

So that was essentially the worst, least enjoyable movie I have ever seen. It was the least satisfying, and as the horribleness continued I wanted to walk out. I decided that wasn't a viable option, so I stayed. Once I was resolute in my continuing to sit through the most dissatisfying film I'd ever seen I was less fidgety and distressed; I had resigned to how much the movie frustrated me. From the very beginning the complete disregard for Nicky was totally frustrating to me. Over and over he tried to do the right thing, and even tried to stand up for himself but everyone in the entire movie just walked all over him. Nothing could go right, and the movie continued without any redemption for all of the bad things that were happening, leaving me completely frustrated and unsatisfied. Tacy acts like a child throughout the entire movie, as perhaps only Lucille Ball can do (even that name seems like a child's nickname for "Tracy" after they couldn't pronounce the "r"). The tantrum she throws at the Trailer Show completely reminded me of a child (maybe me when I was younger?) getting very excited about some crazy plastic toy that had lots of bells and whistles, then begging their mother to buy it for them and explaining how many amazing ways they'll use it and how this specific G.I. Joe with Kung Fu hitting action will be able to help her chop vegetables if they put a knife in it's hand. She rationalizes it in so many ways that seem artificial, and Nicky, as he does throughout the movie, gives in and listens to her, though he knows it's a bad idea. She is thus spoiled by her poor husband, trying to be nice and give her what she wants while knowing that things he gives into will be bad in the end. Even when he puts his foot down, like a mischievous child she circumvents and tricks him, which inevitably turns out badly because the thing he was standing for indeed held disastrous consequences. Much like so many comedies we can see the set up that will lead to some sort of disaster and/or pratfall, except that in this film I didn't feel like the punchline was funny. Any time the irony came to light of how Tacy had screwed up and caused harm to Nicky, it wasn't like some silly prank, but more of a blow to his manhood and the destruction and ungrateful treatment of something he had done to try to make her happy. The ending didn't satisfy me after being tortured for an hour and a half by destruction, ungratefulness, deception, and bad luck. I think the movie was supposed to be cute and funny (one awkward duet does not a cute film make), but the conflict seemed too deep and destructive for me to ever let it slide by. The entire movie I was exasperated by the frustrating situations that were never funny and never redeemed. This was one of the most, probably the most, intolerable movies I have ever seen.

I first saw this movie when I was 12 in the movie theater, I never forgot it over the years. It remains one of my all time favorites to this day. The scenes where Lucy falls out the door into the mud and when she is trying to fix their dinner in the trailer while Ricky drives are hysterical. Another of my favorites is when they are going up the mountain and Lucy knows she didn't get rid of the rocks Desi told her too and the mountain is sooooooo steep! I was in a situation once where we were traveling up a very high mountain with a steep incline on my side of the car and all I could think of was this movie and that scene. I was tickled to death when I could finally get my own copy to watch whenever I needed a good laugh. Lucy & Desi are great together.

Back in the good IL' days, when couples didn't regularly jump into bed before marriage, newlyweds Tracy (Lucille Ball) and Nicky (Desi Arnaz) Collini are anticipating their first night of youthful, athletic lovemaking in their beautiful new home (a housetrailer). The audience anticipates the sexiness of their first night of intimacy, since they're, like, REALLY in love (both Lucy & Desi were great actors, their real-life marriage was going none too good at the time). Telling a white lie while trying to avoid entertaining their overly-helpful new neighbors, played marvelously by Alpha-Female Marjorie Main and fussy, folksy Howard McNear (later of Floyd the Barber fame on Andy Griffith), Tracy makes matters much worse. When poor Nicky nearly gets rid of the hoard of locusts that descended upon his wedding night, he finds his blushing bride is unconscious for the next several hours, thanks to a helpful dosage of sleeping pills...it's pitiful and hilarious. Regardless of what some people say, this movie is definitely not "an extended episode of I Love Lucy." Minnelli is much more gifted and inventive a director to earn that sort of put-down. He and Lucy work together stupendously to work in some fresh, sophisticated gags that would've been too much for a half-hour TV show. Lucille Ball proves that she can make you grin wide and even laugh furiously without resorting to the schemes and slap-stick devices she'd already perfected on the small screen...true, she does try to prepare a 4-course meal in the trailer while Nicky drives over rough, winding roads at 60 miles per hour, with hilarious results of the face-covered-in-salad-oil-and-flour variety. But, in TLLT, Lucy portrays a more aware, decisive and assertive character than the Mrs. Ricardo we know so well. While her edgy hubby is always fretting about what could go wrong in towing his monstrous trailer, Lucy takes the wheel 3 days into their cross-country trek and steers both car and mobile home with casual assurance and skill. Desi also extended his acting skill by jettisoning Ricky's male-dominator role in favor of almost Clousseauesque persona; he's unsure of his financial future, his auto-piloting skills, his ability to make a happy marriage and provides us with some wonderful sight-gags along the way. Nicky's shower-scene was the greatest one in movie history until Psycho came along...us men think it's funny becuz we know the infuriating apparatus is just about to conk him in the gonads, while women have enjoyed the thought that one of their favorite male celebs was doing it buck-naked. This is truly one of the best traveling comedies of all time, right up there with "Planes Trains & Automobiles". Minnelli and Keenan Wynn collaborate to give us one absolutely side-splitting scene, with Keenan playing a silent, sarcastic traffic-cop...worthy of Chaplin's praise. The story is told in flashback and near the end we recognize that the couple is going to divorce after Tracy's awful subterfuge - after all, her Nicky is an engineer and she tries to violate several of Newton's Laws of Gravity & Thermodynamics, bringing on wreck, ruin and economic disaster. There's just no hope for this marriage. Too bad, sniff, sniff. You guess the ending.

The Long, Long Trailer is irritating as much as it is comedic. This is the second film starring Lucille Ball, that I've found irritating and likely the last. The plot's terrible and it's lacking humour and realism, some points for complete lunacy. Desi Arnaz makes it bearable, Tacy certainly isn't worth all the trouble.