Review of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) by Mark S — 19 Nov 2011

Cary Grant is Mr Blandings (as a 1940s Don Draper-type), Myrna Loy is Mrs Blandings and there are two small Blandings. They live cramped into a tiny New York apartment. Space is at such a premium that Mr Blandings has to keep his socks in a basket. To remedy this situation, they decide to design and build their dream house out in the country. Things don't go to plan. For a screwball comedy, the pace here is much slower than you might expect. Particularly in the first third of the picture. This is definitely not The Thin Man. Long time screenwriting collaborators Norman Panama and Melvin Frank - of whom not many people will be familiar - may lack the sharp wit or pacing of other writers, but there is still enough here for Grant and Loy to work with, and the film is much stronger once the house building actually begins.

Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House is very much a comedy of miserable circumstances. Nobody even breaks into a smirk until the 15th minute and Myrna Loy's character first thing in the morning is so deadpan as to appear drugged up to the eyeballs. Even the children's breakfast banter doesn't contain a grain of enthusiasm (though one retort - "you can't squeeze blood from a turnip" - does in fact get right to the heart of the matter. Can you make laughs from a situation in which all the main characters appear stuck in a rut, if not downright miserable? Luckily, the answer is yes, although the schadenfreude of the Blanding's building adventure is more charming than laugh out loud hilarious.

By this point in his career, Grant had already made a string of successful comedies in the 40s, starting with My Favourite Wife and then the powerhouse trio of Arsenic and Old Lace, His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. This film isn't anywhere near that level, but it's still a pleasant way to spend 90-minutes, even if it feels like something Grant would have made 10 years earlier.