Movie review – Kettle #6 – “Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation” (1952) **

The Kettle films stuck to continuity more than, say, Universal’s horror series. They were always reusing supporting characters and cast and keeping things relatively consistent. (For instance, Pa’s Indian friends, the door to door salesman, and Ma’s nosy rival and her mother, appeared in most of the film in the series including The Egg and I.) This one features Ma and Pa’s in laws from Back on the Farm, who invite Ma and Pa to go to Paris.

The in-laws like them so there’s no conflict there. And, even more surprisingly, there is no subplot involving one of the Kettle’s kids. Instead the writers have come up with a spy who gives Pa some important documents. The baddies inc Sig Rumann spend most of the film trying to get a letter off him – which becomes wearying, especially after the half way mark when Pa gives the letter to the Embassy. The rest of the film has Pa act for the US government to smoke out the agents – but since he’s already given the letter to the government there are no real stakes. Not enough story for a feature.

Some bright spots: a really funny joke about Pa’s WW1 service (“they said I couldn’t go until they scraped the bottom of the barrel”), Pa speaking in a French accent, Ma punching out a spy, a great scene where the Kettles watch a dance sequence of a man slapping around a woman and Ma gets all upset, and a touching moment where Pa and Ma reminisce about the night he proposed. There’s yet another scene where Ma gets dolled up, something like the third in the series so far – I’m not opposed to these scenes, but the scriptwriters don’t really vary them much.

These films don’t hold up too well when you pay them attention, but they’re great when you have them on the television while reading a book or something. The best thing about them is the marvellous performances by Percy Kilbridge and Marjorie Main. Kilbridge all slow and non-plussed, Main bombast and raucous.

Note how when Ma and Pa say goodbye to their kids before going to Paris, this one Kettle child stands in the middle of the frame, given this attention which is never paid of. I wonder if they were the child of an executive or something?