VividSimon Simply Perfect

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

SimonJack When the "Egg and I" came out in 1947, Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray had already made five other movies together, and they would do one more after this one. As with each of the first ones, they have wonderful chemistry in this film. Paramount made the first five that included one drama and four comedy romances. Universal signed the couple for this and the last pairing, "Family Honeymoon" the next year. This film is not the hilarious comedy and laugh-out-loud fun of other films. It rather has a warmth of humor in the travails of a city couple setting up in country living. Faith in partners and trust in love play a nice story within the story here, with a good lesson at the end. Colbert is one of the great actresses of all time. She was versatile and could act well in many genres. She had a distinct persona for comedy that made her unusual among actresses. She always played an intelligent woman, if not always a wise one. MacMurray likewise played well across genres. From his last years, people may remember him mostly as an absent-minded or funny professor. But MacMurray did much better comedy roles – mostly straight; and he made some fine Westerns and dramas. He was very good in the few action and mystery films he made. This is a wonderful movie that the whole family should enjoy.

kenjha Newlyweds leave behind city life to become chicken farmers. Hilarity ensues - or so hoped the filmmakers. Unfortunately, the comedy is forced and unfunny and it goes on much too long. Although based on a best-selling novel, the episodic script fails to sustain any kind of narrative flow. It runs out of steam long before the final credits roll. Colbert and MacMurray have both made some fine comedies and they try hard here, but aren't given much to work with. Also, they were a wee bit too old to be playing young newlyweds. Surprisingly, this anemic comedy was a hit at the box office and launched the Ma and Pa Kettle series of films, as well as the "Green Acres" sitcom.

DKosty123 Fred MacMurray & Claudett Colbert star in a romantic comedy which is pretty well done. More important in the long term was the supporting cast which they had - especially Percy Kilbride & Marjorie Main. This film is actually a movie pilot.The Kettle family was created here and became a series of films after starting in 1949. This family became dear to a lot of the film publics heart because it is the depression type big old farm family. Granted not every family featured Richard Long as a child as this one would, but the mom & pa that Main & Kilbride created resonated with the public strongly.This movie was a little better than the series of films because it does concentrate more on Fred & Claudette's plot, but overall the film is just a good one. If you are a fan of the Kettles, this film is essential in showing you where the idea of the folks started. It is interesting that Main's character also got a start with Abbott & Costello in The Wisful Widow Of Wagon Gap, but in spite of that, it took the balance with Kilbride to really round out her Ma Kettle character.

mukava991 I have always had fond memories of this film ever since I first saw it on TV as a child. The comic situations seem tailor-made for the juvenile mind – chiefly the slapstick sight gags involving the inevitable mishaps suffered by urbanites adapting to farm life, including uproarious encounters with barnyard animals and rural eccentrics. In fact this seems like the inspiration for the 60s TV series GREEN ACRES. The screenwriters have taken liberties with Betty MacDonald's original memoir, retaining only the shell (married couple acquires chicken farm in isolated setting) and a few of the subsidiary characters (chiefly the Kettle family, thereby ensuring their cinematic immortality). Most of the incidents are invented for the screen in a feat of imaginative skill, some inspired by passing commentary in the source material. One of the major changes is taking original characters whose ages are 31 and 18, respectively and casting them with Fred MacMurray (pushing 40 at the time) and Claudette Colbert (mid-40s). Also, MacDonald herself grew up in rural surroundings and was somewhat familiar with "farm livin'", whereas the Colbert character comes from a distinctly urban and even pampered upper-class background making the transition to farm wife that much more extreme, with funnier results. The depiction of the dilapidated farmhouse is much stronger on film than on the page. The wood-burning stove (so intimidatingly difficult to handle that MacDonald personified it with the name "Stove" in the book) is cleverly brought to life; Colbert has many wonderful moments as she interacts with this hilariously inoperable monstrosity. MacDonald's descriptions of the timid dog Sport are also rendered deftly and hilariously thanks to the interaction between a well-trained canine actor and the inimitable Colbert.The screenwriters give the Kettle family (headed by the great Marjorie Main at her scene- stealing best as "Ma" and Percy Kilbride as "Pa") several more at-home children (in the book it's only 6 or 7 – the rest being grown up, married and off to their own lives) and successfully explore choice details of their lives (farm animals in the kitchen, Ma Kettle's personal tics – like itching her torso -- the family rush to dinner, the way Ma tosses a few ingredients together and comes up with extraordinarily delicious baked goods, etc.). Colbert and Marjorie Main make an excellent oil-and-water team (Main has said she and Colbert didn't exactly warm to each other during filming). The film is well paced – nothing goes on too long and every scene contains a funny or touching quality. Colbert makes you care about her character; you're rooting for her all the way as the demands of the farm are far more challenging to her than to her husband. Throughout is a parade of colorful rural characters, the Kettles being the most spectacular.Regarding "political correctness," some people may wince at the way Colbert initially reacts to some local Indians who help her husband hunt game. She screams in terror as if they're going to scalp her. Other than that, they are portrayed as rather taciturn individuals who are always hanging around the edges of the action. But if you want florid political incorrectness of the most extreme variety, check out the original book wherein MacDonald goes on for paragraphs trashing the Indians right and left. She even describes a picnic of Indian families in which their behavior is depicted as slovenly, unsanitary, violent and irresponsible. If anything, the screenwriters seem to have been aware of the author's slanted views and done their best to minimize them. In fact, Colbert is promptly corrected by MacMurray for unnecessarily hysterical behavior.It's also a wise screen writing move to have eliminated the baby daughter from the core of the narrative. A baby would have diffused our focus on the central characters.So – those who have never seen this, give it a try. It's light entertainment with the extra zing of the unusual. You can't go wrong with Claudette Colbert and Marjorie Main in top form.