Funny Farm

Here’s a comedy that can’t decide what it wants to be. It begins as an amusing fish-out-of-water story, like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. City couple move to the country for the idyllic peace and quiet, and it doesn’t quite work out that way. You’ve seen a dozen of them. It’s well done, Chevy Chase was always good at this sort of thing. Then it shifts gears when the couple decide they’ve had enough and only want to sell the place and move out. They conspire with the weird townsfolk to create a sort of New England Potemkin Village, with everyone trying to out-Norman-Rockwell each other, which is only funny for about ten minutes. Unfortunately, it’s still got twenty-five minutes to go, including the obligatory “Aw, it ain’t so bad, really, honey, and after all, we’ve got each other!” scene.