text: While the prices have gone up a lot, and some of the details have become dated, any homeowner who's struggled with problems of homeownership should get a lot of chuckles out of this movie. I know I did.<br /><br />Mr. Blandings, a New York ad executive, decides to move his family to the Connecticut suburbs and build himself a nice house there. He gets into one hilarious jam after another, from mortgages to lawsuits to construction difficulties, as the costs and schedule of the construction keep escalating out of control. I thought that the funniest scenes were where Blandings hires a contractor to dig a well for water. They dig down hundreds of feet, but never find water. Yet only a short distance away, a few days later, the basement of his house-to-be floods!<br /><br />Cary Grant and Myrna Loy give believable performances as the harried Blandings couple overwhelmed by problems they never imagined, and Melvyn Douglas is even better as Blanding's lawyer and family friend.<br /><br />The only caveat is that social attitudes have changed a lot since 1948. Mrs. Blandings is portrayed as a bit of a naive dimbulb who has no idea how much additional trouble she's causing, and there's a black maid (horrors!). So don't watch this movie through the social lens of 2003, and you'll enjoy it all the more.<br /><br />