Room for One More

I have always loved Cary Grant. I think he is wonderful with children.

Father Goose was truly enjoyable. I remember seeing Room for One More when I was child. I get nostalgic thinking about it. I haven't seen it for years. It's not on video and I haven't seen it listed. If you ever get chance to see it, I recommend that you do! Good family

I have been a grouchy, childless, curmudgeon for the last 30 years. OK, 40. I especially get cranky with movies of easy sentimentality and clumsy "messages", eg., about patriotism or religion or love or whatever.

So, I have no idea why I bothered to tune into this movie, (other than it featuring Cary Grant), since the listing told me everything I needed to not watch it: children, family, adoption, disabilities, etc. Once into it, however, I just had to keep watching. It surely has all sorts of sentimentality, and blatant messages about adoption and the Boy Scouts; however the writing is so wonderfully deft, and the performances (including those of the children) so perfectly understated that I was fully engaged and easily able to forgive the more obvious "message moments" such as Jane being the belle of the ball, and Jimmy-John's predictable physical and emotional transformation into an Eagle Scout.

Perhaps being a boy scout, and perhaps remembering a sister's first big dance helps to suck you in, but there are eye-stinging moments enough for anyone, such as Jane refusing her (foster)mother's kiss, and the kids in the orphanage playground stopping their noisy play to watch anxiously the visitors looking at them from the balcony.

Next Sunday I'm going to watch the golf, dammit.

If you're family enjoyed "Yours, Mine & Ours", "Father Goose", "With six You Get Eggroll", "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "The Trouble With Angels", seek this movie out on late-late night TV. It is sometimes listed under its original title "The Easy Way".

This was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I can still watch it today with that same warm feeling. What I liked most about it was the interaction between Cary and his real life wife Betsy Drake on screen. They made another movie together, Every Girl Should be Married, which is also a charm and a must see for a Cary Grant fan. Anyhow, you will not be wasting your time if you sit down and watch this very heartwarming film. If you do watch it and feel nothing, then you may be headed towards Grinch-dom.

Of all Cary Grant's films "Room For One More" shows what might have been had Grant taken a different road with his career and done a television show. The film plays like a well written sitcom and is very entertaining and touching in its own way. Of course, arguably the greatest movie star of all time would never have condescended to do TV...and that's how it should have been... but IF he had chosen to, here is work to show he would have become perhaps one of the greatest television stars of all time. Would you rather be remembered for being the "perfect" male or as a befuddled and decidedly overmatched father? As for myself , I would choose the former... though I am much closer to the latter.