Jimmy Stewart had the physical mannerisms of an easily exasperated person, but playing this sort of endlessly befuddled parent didn't suit the measured intelligence that Stewart brought to his characters in the latter half of his career in feature films. The result is a forced comedy about a family vacation at the beach, with whiny kids, finicky appliances and nubile younger neighbors. Maureen O' Hara is along for the ride as the dutiful mom trying to force feed her family a happy shared experience.The biggest problem with this movie is that it is a comedy that isn't very funny. Somehow this film got 3 Golden Globe nominations, 1962 must have been a weak year for comedies.

Out of 20th Century Fox, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is directed by Henry Koster and stars James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara. The film is based on a novel by Edward Streeter and also features a popular singer of the time, Fabian. The adaptation for the screen is by Nunnally Johnson, music is from Henry Mancini & William C. Mellor provides photography (location work mostly in California on Laguna Beach and Dana Point). Plot sees Stewart as Hobbs, a harried city business man who after yearning to take his family to the seaside for a vacation, finally gets his wish. However, once arriving at their destination they find that peace and relaxation is hard to come by.Middle tier Jimmy Stewart piece that merrily skips along without breaking any comedy boundaries. It's framed around all-American family values and tribulations, and even tho the situational comedy set ups are far from fluent, Johnson's script pings with sharp references and gags. Unsurprisingly it's Stewart who carries the main portion of the comedy throughout, both in his dialogue delivery and his visual ticks and mannerisms. Be it laying down a funny walk or pulling faces at the sight of Valerie Varda's cleavage, Stewart's acting prowess finds amusement where others struggle to do so. Maureen O'Hara is pretty as Mrs Hobbs and is good foil for Stewart, but outside of an amusing turn from John McGiver the rest of the cast don't fare so well. With Fabian providing further proof that he should have stuck to singing.Enjoyable time filler if some what low on the revisit scale. 6/10

It's the weirdest thing--Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is supposed to be a mild and funny satire of the harried company man who wants more than anything to preserve his family--as they grow up and grow distant--by bringing them all together for a summer vacation.Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Hara are the parents of, possibly, the dullest and most unappealing brood of "kids" I've seen. They make the acres of children in With Six You Get Eggroll and Cheaper By the Dozen look absolutely mesmerizing by comparison.And the parents are no better. O'Hara has very little to do, other than look as if she needs a gig with John Wayne (so that she will have something to do!) and Stewart looks as if he is chewing on bits of beach sand (when Jimmy wasn't funny, he really wasn't!).There's an ugly edge to his lines and his performance. It's almost as if you can see what might have been the real person under the actor. I don't know if Jimmy Stewart was a nice guy or a jerk, but there's a menace to Mr. Hobbs that makes the viewer squirm and sucks the vitality out of what few laughs the movie can deliver.I found the movie tedious and Jimmy's character almost sinister. MHTAV is a contrived and icky mess. But you know it made a gob of money 46 years ago.I taped the movie off AMC and showed it to my family a few weeks ago. Both wife and daughter laughed, a lot.What I took for sinister apparently still sells.

I have said this before, but I have almost vowed myself to watch almost all film starring the lead male star, even if their low on star ratings, and I admit one or two of them have failed to get my absolute attention when watching them, and this is one of those. Basically Mr. Roger Hobbs (James Stewart) is asking his secretary to write a (long) letter about a vacation to his wife, and obviously then the film sees this vacation. Roger longed to take his family to the seashore, and when he, wife Peggy (Maureen O'Hara) and kids do get to the sand, problems develop with the house, and the vacation turns out to be a half-good half-bad trip. I can't remember laughing too much, even when I did see Stewart struggling to start some sort of pump motor, and I got confused with what was meant to be going on with him and those visitors. Also starring Fabian as Joe, Lauri Peters as Katey Hobbs, Lili Gentle as Janie, John Saxon as Byron, John McGiver as Mr. Martin Turner, Marie Wilson as Mrs. Emily Turner, Minerva Urecal as Brenda, Hobbs' Maid and Michael Burns as Danny Hobbs. Stewart had a similar look to those in Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much, because of the Fedora hat, that is one of the only memorable things in this film, apart from some tiny moments of mistakes, misunderstandings and chaos, this isn't really a fantastic Stewart film. Okay!