Customer Reviews

Lucy & Desi 10: Lucy's Summer Vacation [VHS]

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

One of the best episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour the show that they made after they took the 30 minute I Love Lucy off the air, I thought it was a very good episode and everyone was great including Ida Lupino and Howard Duff! This episode reminds me of the time when I was a little girl and we spent our vacation in a cabin by a lake. This episode is very good and it is just so under-rated!

This edition of "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour" just plain stinks. The Mertzes are written out after the first scene, and don't come back until the very end, removing two enjoyable characters. Lucy and Ricky are given the same cabin as Howard Duff and Ida Lupino, only it takes at least 25 painful minutes of unfunny comedy for each couple to realize this. Ida Lupino is written like an idiot and she should have refused to do this. As a huge fan of "I Love Lucy," this was especially difficult to watch. Most scripts, even the weakest, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz seem to be able to save. For some reason, this one isn't one of them. Poor character development, an unrealistic portrayal of the guest stars, and it really comes out to be a one-joke show anyway. Get this only to complete a collection. This episode just plain stinks.

I Love Lucy. I don't love this episode. But it's so bad it's fascinating.

You can sense the flop sweat by Lucy's obnoxious habit of pushing and shoving people around, so desperate for laffs ...

Another unmistakable stinkburger alert: The frantic canned laughter machine. It rolled along non-stop throughout, heading for overuse meltdown. Sad, considering Lucy's best efforts of the past ...

Worst of all is Ida Lupino. She sweeps around the set in full movie star drag, calling everyone "darling," brandishing fur coats and sun glasses - at night! - so relieved to be slumming in the woods, away from her adoring public ... ("What 'public'?," as Ricky Ricardo once said about his own faltering film career). I especially appreciated Ida's pouty remark that the "swimming pool" outdoors was even larger than hers in Beverly Hills. Her wooden husband, Howard Somebody, corrected her by saying, "Honey, that's the lake." Oh, those madcap movie stars! Who can blame them for a perfectly honest mistake, being so rich and befurred and having to call everybody "darling" all the time ...

Lost script opportunity: While scaling fish with Ida (don't ask), Lucy chirped, "Wait'll my friends find out I was cleaning fish with a MOVIE STAR!" Ida, being the biggest, snootiest star of them all, SHOULD have replied, ever so dryly, "Wait'll my friends find out I was cleaning fish with a HOUSEWIFE!" Alas, no...

I think that I would recommend this film to absolutely anyone who feels like laughing.