Ma and Pa Kettle at Home

"Ma and Pa Kettle at Home" is a solid entry in the series. It's an easy watch. It has more smiles than laughs but that's okay. There is a lot goodwill in this movie. Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride are very lilable, as usual. They both give nice performances, as usual. With "Ma and Pa Kettle at Home" you know what you're getting. It's an easy way to spend 80 minutes.

When this installment of the Ma & Pa Kettle series begins, there is an announcement over the radio that the Kettle's son, Elwin (Brett Halsey) was a finalist in an essay contest. In this essay, he talked about the Kettle farm* as if it's an idyllic place--a picturesque showplace. If you've seen other Kettle films, you'll know that the place is a rundown dump--mostly because Mr. Kettle is the laziest man on Earth! There are two problems with Elwin winning the contest, however. First, two representatives of the essay contest (Alan Mowbray and Ross Elliot) will be coming to stay with the two finalists and their families! Second, Elwin's girlfriend is the other finalist. So, the family will try (in vain) to fool the reps into thinking the farm isn't a dump. But the Kettle place never will look as nice as the other farm. What's next? See the film.

This film is far lower in laughs than most of the Kettle films but it does make up for it with some nice sentimentality. It doesn't lay it on too thick (thankfully) and is a pleasant little B-movie. Worth seeing just to see Santa's sleigh near the end of the film!

*In one of the earliest films, the Kettles win a space-age and beautiful home. Yet, oddly, there's no reference to it in this movie and it's as if it just disappeared. Am I missing something? I don't remember any plots about aliens or the Internal Revenue or the banks taking this home.

If you actually take the time to read the trivia sections for these films, you will know that this is the last of the series filmed with Percy Kilbride. Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki was shot three years earlier, but it's release was held until after this one. This is a wonderful send off for Pa and I wish Universal had been wise enough to quit while they were ahead, but that's another story all together.

This is one of two personal favorites of the series, the other being Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair. The things they both have in common are the look at small town life and a better sense of humor than the first two pictures. There are a couple of early pratfalls with Ma that don't work, but the rest of the film is a nice mix of sincerity and hilarity. Geoduck, Crowbar and the rest of the men in their tribe steal the show when they try to help Pa out of the jam he has created. It's nice every once in a while to slow down, relax and watch a Ma and Pa Kettle film. It's one of the not-so-guilty pleasures of life.

After seeing the Kettles traveling to big cities and living in their ultra-modern house, it was a nice to see them in their natural setting. Although they never totally abandoned their old farm, the family lived in the new house. This time all the kids and pets are back in the old farmhouse again.

Oldest son Elwin has written an essay about how wonderful the Kettle farm is. The essay is entered in a contest that potentially sets him up for a college scholarship, but there is a catch. The contest judges must see the farm. Not to worry, Pa takes care of fixing up the old farm-- with Crowbar and Geoduck's help. Using cardboard and borrowed equipment and livestock, Pa and the Indians make the old farm look almost believable. One sympathetic judge is smart enough to know what is going on while the other is so out of place on a farm that Pa's ruse is almost a success. In the opening scene a calendar shows the date as December 1, and the movie ends up as a wonderful Christmas story with a message.

A stunt double fills in for Marjorie Main as Ma goes through pratfalls more than once. There is a little bit of joke recycling. As with the other movies, almost all the kids are young except for the one that is about to go to college. Elwin appears in enough scenes, but he is hardly the center of attention.

After a bit of globetrotting the Kettles come back to Arkansas to both of their homes, the one that Pa Kettle won in a radio jingle contest in town and the old family farm. It's the old family farm and essay that son Brett Halsey wrote about life on same that forms the basis of the plot of Ma And Pa Kettle At Home.

Halsey's essay has put him in line for a two year college scholarship. He's tied with neighbor Alice Kelley whose father Irving Bacon has a top of the line farm in the county. He's also a miserly man whose small change still has buffaloes on the nickels and who spends more on his livestock than the family.

A pair of judges from New York from the magazine who ran the essays will decide who gets the scholarships. Ross Elliott gets into the country spirit, but Alan Mowbray is the most nervous sickly man ever created on the big screen or small until Adrian Monk. Living at the Kettle farm with the now 13 kids drives him to distraction.

The climax is an old fashioned country Christmas with the Kettles and the only thing that makes me curious is why Universal didn't hold this one up in release until the holiday season. It was released in March of 1954. In the end while Irving Bacon runs an efficient farm, Ma and Pa Kettle know how to run a happy home.

One of the best the Kettle series.