At the urging of my friend, Mark Matera, I DVR'd this 1948 movie a few weeks back, and I finally got around to watching it last night. What a comic gem.
The movie stars the incomparable Cary Grant and Myrna Loy as a married couple with two daughters living in a tiny apartment in New York City. The operative word here is "tiny". They decide to buy a house in the suburbs and end up building a house in the suburbs. The whole thing just snowballs from there, as anyone who has ever built a house, or even bought a new house, can readily relate. What, you didn't realize that you had ordered a "Zuzz-Zuzz Water Softener" for an additional four hundred bucks when your house was being built? (Just hearing Cary Grant say "Zuzz-Zuzz Water Softener" makes this worth watching.)
By the way, the prices points really date this movie. In 1948, $25,000 for a house in the Connecticut suburbs was considered outrageously expensive. The themes expressed in the movie, however, are as relevant today as they were in 1948. What is also timeless is the sheer comic brilliance of Cary Grant and the charm of Myrna Loy. Her describing what colors she wants the paint and wallpaper in her new house to be is classic.
An old movie worth seeing, and one that will no doubt be included in future DVR Alerts.
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