FAMILY HONEYMOON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 520, 10 June 1949, Page 24

FAMILY HONEYMOON

(Universal-International) O express an opinion on the subject of humour is a serious business, and to voice a preference for one kind of humour over another (usually as personal, capricious and unpredictable a business es a woman’s choice in hats) is about the swiftest way I. know of rinviting attack from others who have prejudices of equal violence. But though conscious that I may ‘be on the point of talking myself out of court with many people, I am at least comforted by the knowledge that there is no Committee for the Investigation of Un-British Activities to subpoena me for saying that in general I prefer the present-day American humorists to their British contemporaries. The gulf that separates Punch from the New Yorker is vaster than the Atlantic. In Benchley, Thurber, Runyon, Sullivan, Perelman, and the rest, I find a quality of sophistication and even a seasoned wisdom which is not always discernible in the work of Anthony Armstrong, A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse, or-well, who are the other English humorists anyway? But if current American humorous writing is so good, why are screen translations of it so few and far between? I can recall one admirable Runyon piece of a few years back-A Slight Case of Murder-and recently we had the Lind-say-Crouse version of Life With Father, which was at least 86-proof Clarence Day, but in general Hollywood inclines either to the Hopes, the Woolleys and the Webbs (who are witty in themselves rather than the cause of wit in others, and therefore not complete humorists), or to the simpler symbolism of the custard pie. Or, occasionally, we get something like Family Honeymoon, which has little wit and less humour, but is likely to provoke enough genteel sniggering to fool some filmgoers into believing that it is comedy. Fred MacMurray plays the part of Mr. Jordan-no celestial visitant this time, but a rather down-to-earth lecturer in botany who marries the sprightly widow (Claudette Colbert) of a former faculty member. He also takes over, as a going concern, her family of two small boys and a girl, but the venture gets off to a bad start when the bride’s sister breaks a leg on the day of the wedding and the newlymarried couple find themselves saddled with the three children for the duration of their honeymoon, For laughs the film depends mainly on the frustration of the two adults in their attempts to consummate the marriage, as the phrase has it, on a long succession of doubles entendres, detiving in the main from the remarks of the inmocent children, and (occasionally) on the perfectly fiendish behaviour of the young rips. In small | quantities I might have found these hoary devices bearable-children, do have a penchant for dropping bricks, and it’s a weak stomach that can’t stand an occasional innuendo-but these are not the staples of good comedy. I feel bound to repeat, however, that preferences in humour are capricious and unpredictable, and it is quite on the cards that Family Honeymoon will seem good

fun to some. But not, I imagine, to those who enjoyed, say, Quiet Wedding.