A lot of fun.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

During the early part of his career, in the thirties and early forties, James Stewart appeared in some of the best-known American comedies of all time- "Mr Smith Goes to Washington", "Destry Rides Again", "The Shop around the Corner", "The Philadelphia Story", and so on. After his return from wartime service, however, his comic touch seemed to desert him; a number of his comedies from the late forties, such as "Magic Town", were flops. Even the now-revered "It's a Wonderful Life" was not a great success when first released. Stewart was to make one last great comedy, "Harvey", in 1950, but thereafter his career took a more serious turn, exemplified by his several collaborations with Hitchcock and the series of psychological Westerns he made with Anthony Mann. In the sixties, however, Stewart returned to comedy, and "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" from 1962 is an example. His character, Roger Hobbs, is a stressed, overworked banker from St Louis who takes his family on holiday to a quiet seaside cottage in California, only to find that he has brought most of his problems with him. The cottage turns out to be old-fashioned and dilapidated. His teenage son Danny is a sullen, moody youngster who only wants to watch television. His youngest daughter Katey refuses to leave the cottage and is obsessed with the idea that, because of a new set of dental braces, she will never find a boyfriend. His two elder daughters bring their husbands and children with them. One of Roger's sons-in-law, Stan, is unemployed and the other, Byron, is an eccentric academic with unorthodox ideas about how to discipline children. (Byron's preferred solution is that one should not discipline them at all). The film details how Roger tries to overcome all these problems (and, of course, this being a comedy, how he succeeds in doing so). The film it is based on "Mr. Hobbs' Vacation" by Edward Streeter, a book I have never read. Indeed, before I saw the film I had never heard of it or of its author. Yet when I watched the film recently, it seemed to me all too obvious that it was based upon a novel. The reason that I was able to make this prediction with such confidence is that the film-makers make one of the frequent mistakes committed by those who try to base films upon a literary source, namely that of trying to deal with more plot-lines and more thematic material than the traditional feature-film format can comfortably accommodate. (By coincidence, the next film I saw after this one, Delbert Mann's version of Dickens's "David Copperfield", is one which commits the same fault even more egregiously). The film features several plotlines- the Danny plotline, the Katey plotline, the Stan plotline and the Byron plotline- and none of these are dealt with as fully as they might have been. It is as if the scriptwriters were determined not to omit any developments from Streeter's story without worrying whether a running time of around two hours was long enough to do them all full justice. Some episodes struck me as implausible, especially the one in which Roger deals with Katey's lack of self-confidence by bribing a young man named Joe, played by the then-popular pop singer Fabian, to pay attention to her. (Like that would work in real life!) The scriptwriters seem to have overlooked the obvious obstacles to a romance between the handsome Joe and the rather homely Katey, namely firstly that she is from St Louis and he from California, more than a thousand miles away, and that he is likely to move onto another girl as soon as she has returned home. (A boy with the looks of Fabian will not want for female admirers). Stewart does enough to show that his gift for comedy had not entirely deserted him during his lengthy absence from the genre, and he receives good support from Maureen O'Hara as his attractive wife Peggy, even if she does look improbably youthful to be playing a grandmother to several children. There are also some amusing scenes, such as the one where Roger is forced to accompany Stan's pompous potential employer on a bird-watching expedition. Overall, however, ''Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" does not come close to the standard of Stewart's great comedies from his earlier period. 5/10

Well, what married man can't relate to the travails and perils of a family vacation. This picture brought to mind my own family getaways, making me wonder how I didn't break my arm trying to swat the kids fighting in the back seat of the car with the other hand precariously balanced on the steering wheel. Only the Traveling Wilburys managed to ease the trip, as everyone seemed to get into their song called 'End of the Line' with the repeated refrain, 'Well it's alright'. When that one came on, it was like a half time break from all the arguing and 'he started it' beeswax.With the opening credits, I was intrigued by the mention of Minerva Urecal in the cast. I picture her as a creepy housekeeper from a wide variety of genre films of the Forties, so what does she show up as here? A creepy housekeeper for the Hobbs family with the unlikely name of Brenda. I wish she had more of a role in the story, she could have been put in charge of that little rugrat in the story that kept calling Roger Hobbs (Stewart) 'boompa'. I was surprised Hobbs didn't give him a boompa right up side the head, the kid deserved it.And speaking of unruly kids, this might be one of the first movies to begin addressing the issue of 'never say no' to them, the fallout of which we're living with today in the form of 'safe spaces' on college campuses and amnesty from the unimaginable horrors of real life. It makes me wonder how my generation managed to grow up normal. But I guess normal is kind of relative, as long as you have the right kind of relatives.Which apparently, the Hobbses did not. For a family picture, son-in-law Stan (Josh Peine) took it on the lam pretty quickly after arriving at the beach house. I didn't register much of a connection between married daughter Janie (Lili Gentle) and her husband Byron (John Saxon) either, so the family bonding duties fell to Roger and son Danny (Michael Burns), which was actually kind of touching following the frightening lost at sea sequence.And who should show up for the teenage gals in the audience but era heart throb Fabian as the hip teen Joe Carmody. You know it's funny, I was a teenager in the mid-Sixties myself, and never ran across Fabian in any venue until well past his prime. I have no idea how that could be but that's the story. I had to laugh when he gave the Bobby Darin album to Katey (Lauri Peters) as a going away present; couldn't the film makers have thrown him a bone and come up with a Fabian record?With the benefit of age and hindsight, this picture has a lot to offer for us older movie viewers, but the best was near the end of the story when Stan, who got a job and reconciled with his wife, used the word 'stoned' to describe the episode with Mr. Turner (John McGiver) over the bathroom fiasco. As best as my memory can serve, 1962 might have been right at the cusp of that word transitioning to refer to pot smokers. Who knows what it might mean in another decade or so?

Jimmy Stewart had the physical mannerisms of an easily exasperated person, but playing this sort of endlessly befuddled parent didn't suit the measured intelligence that Stewart brought to his characters in the latter half of his career in feature films. The result is a forced comedy about a family vacation at the beach, with whiny kids, finicky appliances and nubile younger neighbors. Maureen O' Hara is along for the ride as the dutiful mom trying to force feed her family a happy shared experience.The biggest problem with this movie is that it is a comedy that isn't very funny. Somehow this film got 3 Golden Globe nominations, 1962 must have been a weak year for comedies.

Out of 20th Century Fox, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is directed by Henry Koster and stars James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara. The film is based on a novel by Edward Streeter and also features a popular singer of the time, Fabian. The adaptation for the screen is by Nunnally Johnson, music is from Henry Mancini & William C. Mellor provides photography (location work mostly in California on Laguna Beach and Dana Point). Plot sees Stewart as Hobbs, a harried city business man who after yearning to take his family to the seaside for a vacation, finally gets his wish. However, once arriving at their destination they find that peace and relaxation is hard to come by.Middle tier Jimmy Stewart piece that merrily skips along without breaking any comedy boundaries. It's framed around all-American family values and tribulations, and even tho the situational comedy set ups are far from fluent, Johnson's script pings with sharp references and gags. Unsurprisingly it's Stewart who carries the main portion of the comedy throughout, both in his dialogue delivery and his visual ticks and mannerisms. Be it laying down a funny walk or pulling faces at the sight of Valerie Varda's cleavage, Stewart's acting prowess finds amusement where others struggle to do so. Maureen O'Hara is pretty as Mrs Hobbs and is good foil for Stewart, but outside of an amusing turn from John McGiver the rest of the cast don't fare so well. With Fabian providing further proof that he should have stuck to singing.Enjoyable time filler if some what low on the revisit scale. 6/10