Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

The Egg and I Blu-ray Movie Review

Bob: The Man and His Dream

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 26, 2018

Maybe the film should have been titled The Egghead and I. That's got to be what was running through Betty MacDonald's (Claudette Colbert) mind when her husband Bob (Fred MacMurray) suddenly uprooted her from comfort for an anything-but-simple life on the farm. The film, directed by Chester Erskine, is a Comedy of misadventure and misunderstanding down on the farm, where a focused, dedicated husband reinvents himself, and by extension his wife, when he suddenly fancies himself an egg farmer and a man with a plan to live off the land. Things go haywire, of course, often to delightful comic effect for the audience and painful reminders for a subservient wife yanked from her creature comforts so her husband might pursue some hybrid of fascination, dream, and career path. Will their scuffles in the strange land bring them closer together, will Bob realize the foolhardiness of the venture and quit, or will the increasingly frustrated (and jealous) Betty finally say "I'm through!" and give up on her man and his dream?

Roughin' it.

Bob MacDonald doesn’t have a farm, but he wants one. He is a war veteran whose dream, conjured up in a foxhole on Okinawa, is to raise chickens. He has has purchased forty country acres, is quitting his job, and is moving his wife Betty to the country to pursue the dream full-time. He’s a walking encyclopedia of all things chicken and egg. Thinking about and speaking of chickens and farm life occupies his every waking moment. In a word, he’s obsessed. Betty, the good wife that she is, comes with him without much fuss, but fears the worst when she sees the new house. It’s a fixer-upper with “character,” if a broken down front door, a leaky roof, cobwebs, dust, general dilapidation, and a stove that seems to have it out for Betty count as “character.” As the husband and wife adapt -- he cheerfully, she reluctantly -- to their new surroundings and gradually fix the place up, they meet an oddball assortment of neighbors while Betty grows concerned for her own sanity and about the wealthy Harriet Putnam (Louise Allbritton), a nearby farm operator who clearly has an eye for Bob.

The Egg and I is a classic "fish out of water" story, made all the more interesting because the life clearly isn't for Betty -- but she'll do anything and go anywhere to be close to her husband -- while it's home sweet home for Bob, Betty's husband, who is living his dream, not their dream. The film's dynamics see Betty willingly, without verbal, direct protest to her husband, suck it up and give it a go. Of course various obstacles stand in her way, be they environmental or the parade of oddball neighbors and acquaintances she and Bob make. Chief amongst the problems is the alluring and wealthy Harriet Putnam who clearly has eyes for Bob. It all slowly grinds away at Betty, turning her from reluctant companion to a person ready to give it all up, particularly when she believes Bob is falling for Harriet and her days with him seem numbered, anyway. The film does well to intermix screwball comedy with some serious family drama. The former certainly dominates until the final act, but the film is very balanced and agreeable in presentation.

The performances make the movie. Fred MacMurray is at his best as Bob, the boisterous farmer with a dream who lives his new life 24/7, both in action and speech. Rarely does he break from that character, that spirited, spunky, go-get-'em approach to farm life that is his new singular goal in life, so much so that he must plan on the calendar when he and Betty will conceive a child. He wants to build the perfect life, not live the perfect life, while Betty would rather go with the flow and let life lead them. Claudette Colbert shines in the role. She's fatigued with the life from the start, but it requires a long string of misadventures and the very real prospect of Bob leaving her -- in more ways than one, really, checking out of the marriage to marry his passion but also, she assumes, to love another woman -- for her to reach a breaking point. They are surrounded by an interesting group of characters, including Ma and Pa Kettle (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride), characters who would spawn their own movie franchise.

The Egg and I Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Egg and I's 1080p image comes framed at about 1.33:1, essentially preserving its original projection aspect ratio and placing "black bars" on either side of the 1.78:1 HDTV frame. The image, which was "digitally remastered and fully restored from high resolution 35mm original film elements," looks very nice. Grain is retained with an evenness of distribution. Detailing is very good, including at the MacDonald home in its broken-down state where old woods, dust, cobwebs, muddy terrain, tools, vehicles, or any number of other interesting odds and ends present as textural delights. Contrast that with the more finely appointed furnishings, luxurious fabrics, clean woods, and perfectly deigned accents in and around Harriet's home, which are also very sharp and present handsomely. The grayscale is pleasing and accurate. Light macroblocking is sometimes evident if one gets very close to the screen. Several softer-focus edges are present. Some headache-inducing judder interferes during a pan shot at the 1:20:35 mark. The image's various maladies are light and far and few between. Overall, this is a very good presentation from Universal.

The Egg and I Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Egg and I features a middling, but net-positive, DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The opening music is loud but lacks clarity. It's harsh-edged, shallow, a little scratchy, both at the film's start and during a big action scene in chapter eight. Various animal sounds over the opening titles are scrunchy, too. The track does present less intensive, less demanding sounds well enough, like raindrops falling into collection buckets in chapter two as the MacDonalds settle in for the first night in the new home. A ringing alarm moments later, signaling the first full day in the new digs, is adequately clear and sharp. Much of the track clears up beyond the first few moments, though, with various elements, like peeping little chicks in chapter five, sounding better defined than previous animal noises. Dialogue images well enough towards the center and presents with suitable definition.

The Egg and I Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Egg and I contains two featurettes and a trailer. No DVD or digital copies are included. No top menu is included; extras must be selected in-film via a crude pop-up menu.

• Claudette Colbert: Queen of Silver Screen (1080i, 9:16): A brief piece that looks back on the actress. This same supplement was recently found on the Cleopatra Blu-ray release, which also stars Colbert.
• 100 Years of Universal: The Carl Laemmle Era (1080i, 8:44): A short look back on Universal's founder.
• Theatrical Trailer (1080i, 2:08).

The Egg and I Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Egg and I is a funny escape about a man, his dream, and the woman who stands by him through thin and thinner, though she slowly unravels to a breaking point. It's a film of comic misadventure with a fair bit of heart flowing through. Universal's Blu-ray offers very nice 1080p video, a decent but occasionally struggling two-channel lossless soundtrack, and a couple of tangentially related extras. Recommended.