Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely the worst movie.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

One of the big jokes about The Adventures Of Ozzie&Harriet was just what did Ozzie do for a living. I think that it was hoped that people would remember from radio and film that Ozzie was a bandleader and crooner coming up around the same time Bing Crosby did. Harriet was also a singer, but now a full time mom raising their two sons.You have to view Ozzie&Harriet from a longer perspective. They were on radio for a dozen years before the TV series debuted in 1952. The births of David and Ricky were as much a part of our national folklore as Lucille Ball's most televised birth of little Ricky. And on radio it was known Ozzie was a musician.It's not like there were any gags or routines on the show and Ozzie was not an idiot father being put down by his kids. Harriet certainly was an All American mom. I wish she had sung a little, she was a great singer in 30s and 40s. Just idealized family life in the Eisenhower years.The show might have died had it not been discovered that Ricky Nelson inherited musical talent from his parents. He became quite the rock and roll king, but he could never be anything more than a good kid with Ozzie and Harriet raising him. No sullen Elvis Presley like rebellion in a Nelson.Ricky had a string of some pretty good hits for about 10 years with a built in audience to introduce them. It added a whole new generation of fans for the Nelsons until musical tastes changed.Change it did, the all American home wasn't playing quite so good in the counterculture 60s. But The Adventures of Ozzie&Harriet still has its place in our cultural history.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet stands as the longest-running live action sitcom in history. Many people over the years have put down this program as being corny and too "white-bread" for modern consumption. Just like The Donna Reed Show and other "family" shows of that era. O & H is really a charming time-capsule of what we wanted to be back in those days, just like Donna Reed. What sets O & H a tad above the other shows is the fact that the family portrayed here was, in fact, a real family. Ozzie Nelson himself oversaw practically every aspect of production, and let's not forget that, starting in 1957, Ricky was singing genuine "rock and roll" on the show. The plots may be as simple as a late-night search for Tutti-Frutti ice cream, but there is an easy-going flow to the lightweight stories that make them charming. Don De Fore is featured in the early shows as "Thorny" the next-door neighbor, and Lyle Talbot and Mary Jane Croft are in the later ones as the Randolphs. Ozzie and Harriet featured background music taken from the Capitol HiQ music library. This music was used in many shows, cartoons and industrial films of the period. Just hearing this music takes me back to the "old days" and gives me a warm feeling. The performances by the family are all polished and good, especially Harriet with her wise-cracks which always crack me up. The show is in the process of being fully restored, all 435 episodes (!), by Sam Nelson, son of Rick. There has been much said about the quality of the Shout! Factory "best of" set. I own this and I enjoy having 24 episodes which cover the series from the earliest shows to the last. Yes, these are the edited-for-syndication prints, but as I don't remember what was cut from the shows, I don't miss these scenes. In addition, the prints used here are in pretty good shape, better than the ones featured on the public domain DVDs which have been around for many years now. For someone like me, who grew up in the O & H era, it is fine to see this program and relive "the good old days" when situation comedy didn't rely soley on sex jokes and off-color humor. Call me old-fashioned, but I like these classics of early television.

I remember watching "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" back in the late 50's and early 60's. This was just one of those family sitcoms that spanned the decade, the others being Donna Reed, My Three Sons, Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver. When I was around 6 years old, I couldn't wait to see these programs. Ozzie and Harriet, to the best of my knowledge, is not even syndicated anymore. Leave it to Beaver, though, is the quintessential family sitcom from this era. I think that the latter outshines the former for a couple of reasons. First of all, the cast on Leave it to Beaver stayed fairly static; there was very little change in the makeup of the cast; one could expect the likes of Eddie Haskell to appear in every show and everyone loved it.The fluidity of Ozzie and Harriet's cast in it's final years is compared with My Three Son's cast; both added wives to the cast, but by the mid 60's, this signaled an end to both of these shows. Also, Skip Young was sort of too old to play a fraternity brother of the Nelson brothers (by 1963 he was "only" 33 years old... kind of too old for an undergrad, but, perhaps, could have been cast at the very least as an associate Professor). By contrast, Leave it to Beaver didn't suffer this flaw; the cast remained the same; Lumpy Rutherford stayed as Lumpy Rutherford and was a contemporary of Wally's. Same deal with Gilbert, Toohey, et al with the Beav.Secondly, Ward Cleaver's homespun wisdom far outshone that of Ozzie. In fact, Ozzie always looked sort of stilted on camera, so he wasn't as believable as Hugh Beaumont, Fred MacMurray or Robert Young.However, I am partial here. Leave it to Beaver is by far my favorite family sitcom from this era. Ozzie pales to the likes of the Beav. Sorry.

I really liked the series- a true American Classic. I agree with another poster about Wally Plumstead- he provided many humorous moments and actually carried the series for many of the episodes. I think I recall that there were some episodes where only Wally appeared and Rick was featured at the end in a separate filmed performance of his band. Also, the episodes with Thorny and the situations with Ozzie were definitely the most humorous in the series. Just one thing on your stats as far as appearances for each of the main characters. It says Harriet, David and Ricky each appeared in 172 episodes, where Ozzie was in 171. How could this be, since there were at 435 episodes total?