Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Rue McClannahan fills the Hollyhock home with respondents from an advertisement seeking "individuals to move in and create an atmosphere of an all-American family." The rest is comedy at its best. As American as "Apple Pie." Yum-Yum, you'll love it! There's a line that still comes to mind and makes me laugh even now. Jack Gilford played the blind grandfather of the "family" who was sitting with an open newspaper in front of his face; when he lowers the paper and you see his dark lensed glasses and that impish smile from cheek to cheek, setting up the punch line, he says "The comics just don't smell as funny as they used to." With a shake of the head he lifts the paper up in front of that wonderful face.