I Love Lucy: The Movie

Our next movie is a comedy that's suitable for the whole family: The Long, Long Trailer.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had both made movies in the 1940s; Ball had more success than Arnaz, but even she never reached the true heights of movie stardom. It was only with the advent of their TV show I Love Lucy that the two became the couple, and once the TV show became a hit, it was natural that Hollywood's movie studios would once again come calling. The movie they made together was The Long, Long, Trailer, and it plays out much like an extended episode of I Love Lucy, only in Technicolor.

The two once again play a married couple, this time newlyweds. He's got a job that requires him to travel a lot, and she convinces him that a good way to keep expenses down, and enable the two of them to spend more time together, would be to buy a trailer, which they would drive around from place to place depending upon where he was working. Of course, this being the movie equivalent of Lucy Ricardo (the characters aren't named Lucy and Ricky, but Tacy and Nicky; some originality), you know that the result is going to be a disaster.

Indeed, Tacy and Nicky go through a series of mishaps that are painful for them, but hilarious for us: trying to back up the trailer, getting it stuck in the mud, trying to cook in a confined space, and on and on, with the climax being an attempt to navigate the trailer over a narrow mountain pass. The funniest, however, may be the sort of verbal comedy that Lucy Ricardo's mile-a-minute mouth gave us on TV. In one scene, Tacy tells Nicky, "Turn right here", which he promptly does, getting lost. It turns out that Nicky was too quick, not listening to all of what Tacy was going to tell him. It turns out that what she really intended was "Turn right here: left." You figure out what she meant. Ricky Ricardo never could.

The comedy is nothing groundbreaking, but it's more than pleasant enough. It's not exactly sophisticated, either, but that means you can watch it with the kids, especially because it's perfectly clean. In that regard, it's much like Yours, Mine, and Ours. Lucy and Desi made three movies together; the three have been released together as a DVD box set. However, The Long, Long Trailer is also available to be purchased individually, if you're either on a budget or have one of the other two movies already.