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Well, if you’ve watched just about any episode of I Love Lucy then The Long, Long Trailer can offer you no surprises. It basically grafts what amounts to an extended episode of that brilliant, still-hilarious series and adds in enough dead weight to make it feature length. The fact that Vincente Minnelli directed this is a bit of a shocker. Sure, his obsessive use of bold colors is left intact, but where is his elegant touch that made such films as Father of the Bride or Meet Me in St. Louis such classics? It’s hard to say what went wrong, but the episodic nature doesn’t help. But Long, Long Trailer is still an enjoyable film thanks in large part to the chemistry between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. But everything comes together beautifully for two scenes which makes the film worth watching. The first is a silly slapstick scene in which Ball gets to do her patented blend of elegant pratfalls and hilarious facial contortions while trying to make dinner in the trailer while Arnaz drives over some rough terrain. The other is a brief musical moment in which the two of them sweetly cuddle together during a drive and sing “Breezin’ Along with the Breeze.” If Trailer had more sequences like this it would have been a classic, but, as is, it’s an overly long 96 minutes but still enjoyable.
