The Egg and I

Based on a fictionalized autobiographical book written a few years before the movie’s release, The Egg and I is the story of a young wife, Betty, whose life is turned upside down when one night her husband, Bob, reveals that, while reflecting on the fragility of life during his service in World War II, he has decided his life’s purpose is to be an egg farmer. This, alone, is a fairly crazy revelation, but he follows that up by letting her know that he has also, without even discussing it with her first, purchased a property far far from the urban life they know and that’s that.

The structure of this story could make for a searing feminist critique of the powerlessness of women in the patriarchal norms of the mid-1940s: where women were essentially property and had no say in the choices their husbands made about where they would live, how they would earn their money, and how their money would be spent. Women are routinely shown to have basically no agency over their lives and live only in service of their moronic husbands. Our point of view protagonist goes along with the insane gag of the farm and its idiosyncrasies because she loves her husband, and also because she has no choice. Ma Kettle must manage an entire home and feed and clothe ten or more kids, all while her worthless husband who “isn’t much for working” (her own words) basically gets to be a layabout, overgrown child.

And yet, the movie isn’t some feminist masterwork, nor is it even stealthily making some kind of feminist critique. Whether or not it believes in maintaining the status quo from some kind of political position, it certainly has no problem reinforcing the status quo as it relates to shooting for a cheap laugh or tying up the loose ends of the story. For example, when Betty has finally had enough of the farm life, amazingly driven more by her husband’s inattentive obliviousness than by what an unbelievable chore the new life she didn’t ask for has been on her, without no-fault divorce all she can do is run away to her parents, only for them to pressure her into looking to reconcile because that’s what families did back then. And when she does go back, the writers happily give her husband a grand speech about how, apparently, the whole situation they found themselves in by the end of the movie is somehow her fault and she, chagrined, takes him back. Marriage is shown to be a prison and the film has absolutely no problem with that.

Furthermore, the only vaguely emancipated woman, who owns her farm outright without the support of a husband, who seems smart and capable enough to run a profitable enterprise among a community of largely struggling neighbors, is the villain of the piece: the seductress who is threatening the central couples relationship, who it is implied uses her feminine sensuality to secure profitable contracts in a most uncouth manner. You could even argue that, in the subtext, her leaving town and selling her farm (ridding the community of her evil influence) is key to the story’s ultimate “happy” plot resolution.

But the movie doesn’t just seem to hate women. Fundamentally, it hates everyone. In the great question of punching down verses punching up in comedy, this movie believes deeply in punching down. You could not ask for a more sneering, condescending, snobbish comedy vehicle. Despite the film’s own acknowledgment of Betty’s powerlessness, the film frequently attempts to mine laughs from kicking her while she is down. She feels insecure, lets find an excuse to get her thrown into the mud just in time for the kind of people that make her feel insecure to show up and see it. It just all feels more cruel than funny. It isn’t just Betty, though. Most of her neighbors are presented as some kind of disgusting stereotype of a backwoods yokel, especially the worthless Kettles. It reminded me a bit of the comedy of The Big Bang Theory, where the jokes aren’t so much “here is a funny situation involving these oddball people, possibly the direct result of their eccentricities, hopefully presented in a loving way,” as it is “gawk at the inferior other, and laugh at how they are different.” The punchline isn’t the end of a joke, per se, but just the unusual thing existing at all. This makes the whole movie feel less like we are laughing along with the people in their humorous circumstances and more like we are mockingly laughing at the poor, struggling, rural oddballs, possibly from our urban, educated, ivory towers. It both bored me and made me sick. One scene, in which the whole community comes together in solidarity to help mitigate the damage of a forest fire, and rebuild after its damage is done, actually works. Other than that, nothing else in this mean-spirited and patronizing film worked for me on any level.

Would Recommend: If your regressive views of society are just as backwards as the film itself.

Would Not Recommend: If you champion comedy that punches up instead of down.