"George Washington should have chopped this house down instead of the cherry
tree."After the initial shock of seeing the beautiful Ann Sheridan married to Jack Benny, I enjoyed this film and even laughed out loud a number of times, especially when Benny first sees the house: "I couldn't warm up to this place if I was burned alive in it!"
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Benny and Sheridan are apartment dwellers in NYC. Benny is happy, but Sheridan wants to own a home in the country. After their dog (Terry a.k.a. "Toto" from THE WIZARD OF OZ!) chews up a rug and cause their landlord (Franklin Pangborn) to fall down, they're forced to move. Without consulting her husband, Sheridan buys a 200-year-old run down money pit out in the middle of nowhere. He hates it from the moment he sees it (and falls through it's floors and even a few times into the well), but after all kinds of wacky misadventures he begins to like it.
It's not the most original script ever written, but I got quite a few laughs out of it and will definitely watch it again. Good supporting cast also: Hattie McDainel, Franklin Pangborn, Charles Coburn and Percy Kilbride. Highly recommended, it's probably my favorite of the repairing-a-dilapidated-house subgenre.
I could be wrong, but to me the interior shots looks a lot like the interior shots from ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.
