Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
Tags: satire

Plot synopsis:
Roger Hobbs is an overworked banker whose wife Peggy plans a quiet seaside vacation with their family, including the grown daughters, family cook, sons-in-law and grandchildren.
What he finds upon reaching their vacation destination is a very dilapidated beach house with nosy neighbors.
Complications mount up. His teenage son Danny only wants to watch television. His youngest daughter Katey, embarrassed by a new set of dental braces, refuses to leave the beach house. And his grandchildren don't want anything to do with him.
Furthermore, one of his sons-in-law, Stan, is unemployed and Mr. Hobbs must entertain Stan's snooty potential employer on a boring bird-watching jaunt. An older daughter is married to the aloof professor Byron, who has unorthodox ideas about both disciplining children and the family dynamic.
One by one, Mr. Hobbs tries to solve each problem. After the television breaks, he finds time to take Danny on a boating trip, where they get very lost in the fog but bond as father and son. He also manages to take Katey to a dance, where he bribes a handsome young man named Joe to pay attention to her.
The bird-watcher and his prim wife don't turn out to be what they seem to be and chaos reigns for a while. But in time Mr. Hobbs and his wife sort out everybody's personal crisis, Joe turns out to be a suitable suitor for Katey, and the family is almost sad to leave the beach and return home.

Review: "Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation" is one of the most enjoyable family films ever made.
The plot is simple: Harried St. Louis banker Roger Hobbs (James Stewart) is looking forward to a quiet, romantic vacation with his wife Peggy (Maureen O'Hara) who, unknown to him, has instead opted for a family reunion in a rented Northern California beach house.
And I mean alive because in spite of a capable cast including Fabian, John McGiver and Marie Wilson, the film belongs to Stewart.
With the support of the eternally beautiful O'Hara (who's hardly anyones idea of a grandmother) and a memorable Henry Mancini score, "Mr. Hobbs" may depict a harrowing "vacation" but it's one the the viewer will thoroughly enjoy taking.
Jimmy Stewart plays a St. Louis bank executive who goes on vacation with his wife(Maureen O'Hara) and children on a beach front house in California, where his planned romantic getaway with his wife does not go as planned, since the children get involved with their own problems(his lovelorn teenage daughter and young son who only wants to watch television, especially westerns!) On top of that, the plumbing does not work properly at times, especially a water pump with a mind of its own.Amusing comedy is quite warm and funny, with a charming performance by Jimmy Stewart as the harried father, whose attempts at sailing and bird-watching also meet with mixed results, but film remains a nostalgic comedy of a (sadly) bygone era, but one that can still be enjoyed on DVD whenever the viewer likes..
Mr. Hobbs wants to take a nice quiet vacation to the beach for the summer but Mrs. Hobbs insists on taking the whole family, daughters, son-in-law, grandchildren, cook and various drop ins, with them.
They keep the whole enterprise moving along with some cute side stories, Fabian is charming as a suitor to their daughter who is going through growing pains not helped by her new braces and the distinctive presences of John McGiver and Marie Wilson contribute a bit of spice in small scenes of a supposedly straight laced couple who hold the key to a new job for Jimmy's son in law, John Saxon-looking particularly handsome here.
Roger Hobbs (Jimmy Stewart) is the harried father who longs for a quiet holiday with his wife (Maureen O'Hara) but in the end goes along with her wish to have a family reunion, which turns out to be far from ideal.
Fabian, as Joe, is a nice addition to the scene and he's more mature here than in his earlier movie, which I happen to like best, "North to Alaska." An old familiar face is Reginald Gardiner, as Reggie, who has been a part of countless film comedies dating back to the 1930s.
James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara spark some real chemistry here, and the production is easy on the eyes with some lovely location shooting, and wrapped up in a classic Henry Mancini score that will leave you humming the title song..
Mrs. Hobbs uses the excuse of a summer vacation, in a shack of a shore house, to bring them all closer together before their individual roads (which they are already traveling) lead them further away from "home".The rental home is a shambles and the "family" doesn't cooperate with "the plan".
Nicknamed "Boom-pa" ("Boom-pa, couldn't you do better for your old man?" jokingly(?) insulted) by one of his grandchildren, bird watching with John McGiver ("What kind of bird is that?"..always a "Barn Swallow"), and playing with his temperamental Rube Goldberg water pump, Stewart is the centerpiece to this amusing and warm film.
(Maureen plays a really sexy grandma too...)PS--- FABIAN, as the teenaged love interest of Mr.Hobb's daughter (the one with the "new" braces on her teeth), gets to sing too.
Good family comedy film that covers all the bases except editing.Slightly better screenplay to compliment the excellent writing would have turned this movie into a bonafide EXCELLENT CLASSIC.But despite it's small flaws,this movie will definitely delivers on it's genre's promise.Not for people who do not like any TEEN LOVE stories at all.......
One of my favorite moments is when Mrs. Hobbs asks her husband, "What did you tell him I had, dementia praecox?" You don't get dialogue and delivery like that anymore...The thing that mars the movie is that either the people making the movie didn't realize how wonderful the scenes between O'Hara and Stewart were, or they worried about some stupid demographic junk and silted the movie up with "youth appeal".
Most of the scenes with the teenage daughter could have been cut, especially the awful scene where Fabian sings, and the sequence where he goes sailing with his son should have been tightened.But the scenes with the two parents (especially the ones in the bedroom where they discuss their sons-in-law and the house), and Stewart's occasional morbid fantasies make this movie a winner.
However, if we approach this film without high expectations, then we can accept it for what it is: a mildly amusing movie that allows us to sit comfortably with two of our all-time favorite actors, Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Hara (although, to be honest, Maureen is not that interesting here either).
Luckily, very few scenes indeed do not feature Jimmy Stewart.Well, I take some of that back; "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" is saved towards the end by the appearance of John McGiver and Marie Wilson as Mr. and Mrs. Turner, a business couple who make a point of being very dull.
To be fair, Fabian is not bad either, playing his role rather sympathetically; and the family's 1960 Dodge wagon, with its fantastically distinctive grill, is also cool to see.Particularly annoying is a lengthy sequence in which Jimmy Stewart and his son are piloting a sailboat out of a harbor; this they do with great difficulty, barely missing hitting other boats, and upsetting a water-skier.
John Saxon appears in a bathing suit, with a shockingly well-built body (if I may say so), and it appears that, though he is married to Jimmy Stewart's daughter, he is on the verge of having an affair with Varda; in the end, though, this idea is not pursued.One final note: when Stewart's family enters the massive yet run-down vacation house, Stewart goes to climb the stairs; as he takes the first step, he grabs the large knob on top of the railing, and it lifts right up.
Out of 20th Century Fox, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is directed by Henry Koster and stars James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara.
Plot sees Stewart as Hobbs, a harried city business man who after yearning to take his family to the seaside for a vacation, finally gets his wish.
Maureen O'Hara is pretty as Mrs Hobbs and is good foil for Stewart, but outside of an amusing turn from John McGiver the rest of the cast don't fare so well.
(I'm not an old fuddy-duddy chronologically, just in spirit.) Stewart is your average Dad, taking above average Mom (Maureen O'Hara) and family to spend the summer in a rustic Victorian house at the beach.
When the air got cleared, Mr. Hobbs was an enjoyable experience for her.Basically what the film is that Stewart and O'Hara rent an old barn of a house located on a California beach and there's room enough for them, the two kids still at home and two married daughters with spouses and families.
So the entire Hobbs extended family moves in for the summer and it's one situation after another with problems with appliances and relationships and a pair of officious guests, Marie Wilson and John McGiver who are the best in the supporting cast.20th Century Fox secured the teen box office by getting the services of Fabian to appear in this film.
In 1962, the year this film was released, Stewart starred in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and McGiver, who plays an unwelcome guest at the beach house here, appeared in "The Manchurian Candidate," arguably the two best films of the year.
"Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" is the best of the 60's Jimmy Stewarwt family father doesn't know best films, much more palatable than the creepy and antiquated "Take Her, She's Mine", where Jimmy worries more than is healthy about Sandra Dee's virginity and where insipid folk songs are considered raunchy and subversive.
Jimmy Stewart was fifty-four when he made this film, and was just beginning to turn into everyone's idea of the perfect Grandpa, while Maureen O'Hara was forty-two and had undergone the transition from fiery young redhead every hot-blooded male would love to tame to mature woman with a touch of sophistication  a little like the childhood friend's mother you secretly thought was hot.
Together they should make a temperamentally incompatible screen couple but it is probably the scenes they share together that work best in this almost unbearably wholesome comedy.Stewart plays the eponymous Mr. Hobbs, an harassed bank executive who's a little dismayed to discover the intimate vacation he had been expecting to spend with his wife has become a family get-together of daughters, son-in-laws and grandchildren.
The location is a ramshackle old house on the Californian coast that a modern-day family wouldn't spend five minutes in but, with admirable fortitude they make the most of the place and its not long before it begins to feel like a home from home.Nunally Johnson's script seems to spend most of its time skirting around its more adult strands  the marriage difficulties of one daughter, and the roving eye of the other's husband  and remains firmly on safer ground, such as the romance of Stewart's awkward brace-wearing daughter and Stewart's trials with stubborn pumps and tipsy guests.
Jimmy Stewart is one of my all-time favourite actors and I could watch and listen to him reciting a recipe, let alone starring alongside the unique Maureen O'Hara.This gentle family comedy is a little Disney-like but as the mild mannered but very much put upon Mr Hobbs, Stewart is perfect, eschewing a decent American wholesomeness but without the sickliness that sometimes accompany such a character from this era.Blending in neatly the Cary Grant turn in Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House, the Hobbs' escape the big city and end up staying at a falling- down old house on the beach; cue broken everything, that usually can't be fixed, at least not without a great deal of comically extended hassle.The family encompasses the two Hobbs' children, who obviously do as all youngsters inevitably do - cause as much trouble for their parents as possible.
When he plans a romantic vacation for just him and Maureen, she takes it into her head to show him the entire family loves and needs him, so all the children, in-laws, and grandchildren are invited to come along.
Hobbs marveling at a 50 year old light bulb, or the maid quitting because she misunderstood him when he said he was going to get "some sun on the beach".The one scene that chokes me up every time is when Stewart shows O'Hara the $5 bill that Fabian returned to him after the dance..
Mild account of Stewart, O'Hara an daughters taking a long overdue vacation to a seaside community where they mix (at times uneasily) with locals and entertain visitors in a vast holiday house on the beach.
Domestic problems come and go, teenager Lauri Peters takes up with Fabian and his adolescent attempt at a beard, while John McGiver and wife Marie Wilson play a bland couple who spend a chaotic few nights with the Hobbs' with disastrous results.It's passive family fare, the most action you'll see being Stewart and his young son becoming lost in fog while enjoying a defining father-son bonding experience in a sailboat and a pre-dawn bird-spotting adventure.
Generally good cast features Natalie Trundy playing one of the Hobbs daughters, while John Saxon has a small supporting role as one of the spouses.The film finishes where it began with Stewart back in the boardroom, but with closer relationships with his children as a result of the experience.
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.
Maureen O' Hara is along for the ride as the dutiful mom trying to force feed her family a happy shared experience.The biggest problem with this movie is that it is a comedy that isn't very funny.
. not just because that's where the good Mr. Hobbs leads his boisterous brood for the titular vacation, but also since that's what Jimmy Stewart is doing for the entire movie.
The possibility of infidelity is a surprisingly frequent visitor to the Hobbs' vacation house -- the whole family seems to wink at the fact that pompous son-in-law Byron appears to be having it off with a Eurotrash beach bunny.
But Clint Eastwood wasn't directing movies in 1962 so Stewart was stuck with lesser John Ford vehicles and profitable pabulum like "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation." I'm sure he did something nice with the money, maybe a memorial for the son he lost in Vietnam..
The pitfalls of taking a family vacation are depicted in this 1962 comedy with James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara.The couple trade plans for a vacation in France to a beach house in the west.
Marie Wilson again shows her comedic gift as a dumb blond when she is locked in the bathroom with the Stewart character.Then there is the teenage daughter who is ashamed of her braces until she finds and falls for Fabian at a dance.The best part of the movie is that Stewart keeps emphasizing the importance of the family structure.
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.
I didn't register much of a connection between married daughter Janie (Lili Gentle) and her husband Byron (John Saxon) either, so the family bonding duties fell to Roger and son Danny (Michael Burns), which was actually kind of touching following the frightening lost at sea sequence.And who should show up for the teenage gals in the audience but era heart throb Fabian as the hip teen Joe Carmody.
I had to laugh when he gave the Bobby Darin album to Katey (Lauri Peters) as a going away present; couldn't the film makers have thrown him a bone and come up with a Fabian record?With the benefit of age and hindsight, this picture has a lot to offer for us older movie viewers, but the best was near the end of the story when Stan, who got a job and reconciled with his wife, used the word 'stoned' to describe the episode with Mr. Turner (John McGiver) over the bathroom fiasco.
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.
In the sixties, however, Stewart returned to comedy, and "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" from 1962 is an example.
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.
Overall, however, ''Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" does not come close to the standard of Stewart's great comedies from his earlier period.
I do have a trivia question though: Fairly early in the film there is a scene in the Hobbs' bedroom with Stewart and O'Hara.
115 minutes.SYNOPSIS: In "Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation", Stewart was playing his own age as banker Roger Hobbs but looking much more spruce than he had for some time.
But one of the "stars" of the film is undoubtedly the wonderfully ruinous beach-house itself, "like something out of Edgar Allan Poe," as James Stewart's character tartly comments.In all, reasonably entertaining, but it could have been better!.
This is the first of two films that James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara made together.
Stewart was 54 when this film was made, and he plays Roger Hobbs, a man about that age.
O'Hara was just 42 at the time, a few years below the likely age of Peggy Hobbs.
Jimmy Stewart, as Roger Hobbs, takes his teen-aged daughter and young son on a vacation to Carmel, California, where they've rented a decrepit old beach house the size of a mansion.
"Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" was the first of three family-oriented comedies that James Stewart made for 20th Century Fox under the direction of Henry Koster.
In this film, Stewart plays a banker named Roger Hobbs, who plans a quiet summer vacation with his wife Peggy (Maureen O'Hara).
Roger inadvertently solves all his children's problems, ultimately making the vacation a very successful one."Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" is not a hilarious comedy by any means, but it does have several very funny moments.
Roger also struggles to operate the complicated water pump at the beach house, and his voice-over narration only adds to the humor of the scene.Despite its very good cast and excellent music score by Henry Mancini, "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" is unfortunately not a popular film nowadays.
James Stewart followed this film with two other comedies directed by Henry Koster: "Take Her, She's Mine" (1963), which I think is much better than "Mr. Hobbs," and "Dear Brigitte" (1965), which I think is a waste.