This Disney comedy gets off to a roaring start when plumbing contractor Fred MacMurray, his wife Jane Wyman and their three kids try to get to a Battery dock to catch a cruise ship to France and are escorted by a very friendly and overly chatty New York cab driver. Like Spencer Tracy in "Father of the Bride", provider MacMurray is the most overlooked member of the family, unappreciated by his two sons and daughter and overshadowed by the compassionate mom, Wyman, who sometimes seems to take him for granted. He is forced to put up with Wyman's family and friends from Boston at a send-off party who don't understand why someone like Wyman would go off an marry some plummer from the mid-west. Then, on the ship, he finds himself overwhelmed by his youngest son when everybody goes off to do their own thing. He realizes that as the older children find themselves involved in their own young romantic problems, they prefer the tenderness of Wyman's motherly advice to his more direct approach in dealing with them. Daughter Deborah Walley falls in love with the neglected heir to a fortune who is the product of a broken home and prepares to have her heart broken while son Tommy Kirk makes plays for very single young woman he meets. Then, when they get to Paris, embarrassment after embarrassment befalls MacMurray, first being lost in the sewers (and seemingly never getting to the Louve), then dealing with a caddish Hungarian who makes a pass at Wyman. It all falls apart at a party that Walley's boyfriend's mother (Jessie Royce Landis) gives where MacMurray gets drunk on a liquorish liqueur, then creates a major disturbance in Monte Carlo that could result in an international incident.
From the Absent Minded Professor to Son of Flubber to Father of Trouble, MacMurray was Disney's "every-man", expected to keep the family together without actually really having any say. That's the lovely Wyman's job, and she is the perfect wife and mom in every manner. MacMurray utilizes his massive talents of light-hearted comedy to keep your interest, but the episodic situations and predictable outcomes make this situation comedy like Disney movie an overlong precursor to "The Facts of Life Go to Paris". Disney seems to be taking over here where MGM had stopped after the last of the Andy Hardy movies were made several years before. Disney does raise a bit of an eyebrow by briefly introducing a character who is obviously a prostitute and a family of opportunistic Parisans who set their money-hungry eyes on the not quite so rich Americans. But when you put it altogether, what it seemingly comes down to was Disney was telling us that while it's nice to venture, there's no place like home, and the backyard you live in is the best place to hang your hat.
From the Absent Minded Professor to Son of Flubber to Father of Trouble, MacMurray was Disney's "every-man", expected to keep the family together without actually really having any say. That's the lovely Wyman's job, and she is the perfect wife and mom in every manner. MacMurray utilizes his massive talents of light-hearted comedy to keep your interest, but the episodic situations and predictable outcomes make this situation comedy like Disney movie an overlong precursor to "The Facts of Life Go to Paris". Disney seems to be taking over here where MGM had stopped after the last of the Andy Hardy movies were made several years before. Disney does raise a bit of an eyebrow by briefly introducing a character who is obviously a prostitute and a family of opportunistic Parisans who set their money-hungry eyes on the not quite so rich Americans. But when you put it altogether, what it seemingly comes down to was Disney was telling us that while it's nice to venture, there's no place like home, and the backyard you live in is the best place to hang your hat.