Cinema
Disasters in the Sun
By ISABEL QUIGLY
HOLIDAY time is upon us, both liter- ally and cinematically, and for the second time in a month we go holi- daying with an American family. Henry Koster's Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation ('U' certificate) is neater, funnier, much better scripted (by Nunnally Johnson), and less, you might say, wholemeal than Disney's Bon Voyage, but the two have enough in common to give us a fair idea of the idealised-typical American family out on a spree, with father kept firmly HI his place by a sweet-looking steel-lined wife and a fairly dreadful brood of adolescent kids. In this case, Mr. Hobbs has grandchildren and sons-.in- law to cope with as well, two of the adolescents being married and in the process of bringing till even dreadfuller broods; and, in place of Fred MacMurray, we have James Stewart of the gangling gait and dropped half-sentence, and the perfect but absolutely unnoticeable timing, who can say just about everything that ought to be said on the subject by cocking an eye at (say) a recalcitrant boiler, a Finnish cook giving notice, or the third carload of stone-filled suit- cases waiting to be carried upstairs. And because everything is seen through the eyes of mild, middle-aged exasperation, the result, though thoroughly pleasant, is not over: cosy; in fact the endearing frightfulness of families, particularly three generations in a huddle with conflicting methods of child-rearing and absolutely nothing in common but blood- relationship, has seldom come across with such charm, and such an outsize sting in its tai l• comedy, sharpened by a lowering sense of domestic disaster (involving not just Finns and boilers, but temperaments, fatherhood. the lot), is rare enough these days for me to cheer, a bit too loudly perhaps, an example of it as graceful and likeable as this. Holidays again in Girl on the Road (direc- tor: Jacqueline Audry; 'A' certificate), with a girl by an act called Agathe, played bress called Agathe a length of F Aems, ending up, after string of lifts and pick- ups through the lenrance, with a man called Jean-Claude, played by Jean-Claude ririalY, on the Riviera beach she's been set on finding. Men on the road include Daniel Gelin, Bernard Blier, Pierre Brasseur, Fernand Gravey, Robert Hossein, guest-like appearances in a film that hardly seems to warrant so much talent.
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