The Long, Long Trailer [VHS]
Success in that newfangled television business prompted Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz to bring their slapstick chemistry to the big screen, courtesy of a 28-foot monster of a trailer home.The Long, Long Traileris one of those domestic nightmare movies, in which an ordinary couple has their existence upended by a new contraption:  in this case, a lemon-yellow motor home. They make the mistake of towing said behemoth to Colorado, a honeymoon journey fraught with tilted axles and Lucy's ill-advised collection of large souvenir rocks. One disaster follows another, with the action rarely rising above the level of a sitcom (MGM's top director of musicals, Vincente Minnelli, is overqualified here). One notable exception:  the climactic sequence, a funny-nervous crawl up an 8,000-foot mountain pass. The film was a box-office hit, proving that moviegoers would go to theaters to see a TV star's hair in its natural red color.--Robert Horton