Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

One of the last two films on the AFI Laughs left to watch. One of the films I reserved until the end to watch with my wife. Given the number of films I watch there are many I watch on my own, but since this was an old Cary Grant film we had never heard of we expected it to be pretty good.

Turns out this was RKO's biggest blockbuster, and a very popular film in the 1940's. Which is amazing, because I hated it. No really it was hard to watch because the characters annoyed me so much.

Cary Grant plays "Mr. Blandings," a short tempered father of a middle class family, with a wife and two daughters. He works for an advertising agency in New York and lives in a cramped home. Myrna Loy plays "Mrs. Blandings," the wife who is completely non-supportive of her husband and allows her ex-boyfriend from college "Bill" [played by Melvyn Douglas] to hang around. The family buys a dump, and eventually end up building a new house. No one in the family gets along, and the comedy is overshadowed by the bad attitudes throughout the film.

Maybe it was because I saved it, expecting it to be good. Maybe it just wasn't good. I found this to be incredibly over-rated, and was inspired to make a list of the 50 most over-rated films after watching this one.

Vote: 3/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040613/

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