The Worst Film Ever

Simply A Masterpiece

Good concept, poorly executed.

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.

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

I'm sure almost all middle-aged male actors in Hollywood made a film like this sometime, but this must be the best. From the warm, sunny opening music (Henry Mancini strikes again!) onwards, it's a real treat. James Stewart breezes his way through this film, and the chemistry between him and Maureen O'Hara goes a long way to making the whole thing so appealing. The mood is light and affectionate and there are a few genuinely touching moments. Only a couple of downers - the dreadful 'Cream Puff' song (what were they thinking?) and Fabian's acting. For some reason, films of this period always had to include a heart-throb pop singer. Despite these small niggles, I love this movie and even though we now have it on DVD, I never miss it if it comes on TV.

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.

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!