Slick, entirely superficial, entirely unconvincing comedy with a sparkling star-trio at the helm; it passes the time, if not much else. Cary Grant, an advertising executive who makes $15K a year, wants to move his wife and two kids (and a sass-and-sweetness black maid) to the country, but building a new home rather than buying one proves to be a costly headache. Grant has obviously been encouraged to play this material to the hilt, and his hammy, wide-eyed reactions are funny if eventually a bit smug and tiresome. Myrna Loy doesn't have much to play as Grant's wife (she drawls out a few funny lines in her calm, cool-headed manner), but Melvyn Douglas out-acts them both as "a friend of the family" with a small crush on the Mrs. Director H. C. Potter, working from a screenplay by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama (from Eric Hodgins' book), knows how to sell this picture to an eager-to-laugh mass audience: he keeps the pace popping, the cast manic and the visual jokes easy to spot. A picture so completely manufactured might easily wear some viewers down, if situational comedy is not their thing. **1/2 from ****
