"The Egg and I" is a comedy. The film stars Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray as a newlywed couple. MacMurray, who has recently returned from the war, decides against the nine to five office routine and buys a chicken farm in the country. While MacMurray seems to know everything about chicken raising, and is eternally optimistic, many things go wrong. Especially for Colbert, who had never (and had never wanted to) live in the country. This scenario resembles that from the 1960s sitcom "Green Acres".
Tension slowly develops between the newlyweds. Colbert becomes jealous of neighbor Louise Allbritton, who has designs on MacMurray.
"The Egg and I" introduces the characters Ma and Pa Kettle. Neighbors to MacMurray's farm, they are down to earth country bumpkins. They have fifteen children who run wild on the Kettle farm. Ma (Marjorie Main, who received the film's only Academy Award nomination) can't even remember all their names. The success of the movie and the popularity of the Kettles led to nine sequels starring Ma and Pa Kettle. Along with Francis the Talking Mule, the Kettles helped keep Universal Studios in the black.
One of the grown Kettle children is Tom (Richard Long). He is a Dana Andrews lookalike, clean shaven and with no accent. It isn't credible that he would have been raised in the Kettle household, which seems like a parody of the transient sharecropper family from "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940).
The story of "The Egg and I" is told from Colbert's point of view. Her struggles to succeed as a farmer make her a comic figure, similar to a Lucy Ricardo of the 1940s. This is certainly a change from the glamorous roles she played in earlier movies such as "Cleopatra." The "Egg and I" was one of seven films starring Colbert and MacMurray, who were typically paired romantically.
While "The Egg and I" has its entertaining moments, much of the humor doesn't work. Colbert falls for a story about a giant chicken in a scene that seems to go on forever. And is there ever any doubt about Fred MacMurray's fidelity to Colbert? (57/100)
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