Sitting Pretty

Widely popular when it was originally released in 1948, Sitting Pretty seems only mildly amusing and highly contrived in 1957.

A whimsical comedy about a family who had a self-acknowledged genius for a baby sitter, the film pokes pleasant fun at suburban life and mores. Sitting Pretty's main virtue is the superlative acting of Clifton Webb, who at times is wildly hilarious in a deadpan style as a mysterious and omniscient figure who takes a job as children's companion and domestic aide in order to get background for a lampooning novel about suburbia. He has several classic moments--among them a wonderfully droll bit when he chastises an infant for throwing cereal by emptying the bowl on the youngster's head. Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young perform adequately as the harassed couple in typical domestic comedy fashion with soap-opera naivete. The script is often forced and depends on such cliches as prying neighbors, bosses chasing their secretaries, and the like.

Not one of the Brattle's more happy revivals, Sitting Pretty demonstrates how much more sophisticated both Hollywood and its audiences have become in the past ten years, or perhaps the jokes have just grown old.