THE KETTLES IN THE OZARKS was the penultimate film in the Ma and Pa Kettle series, the first one without Percy Kilbride, who had retired, and the only one without the Pa Kettle character. Ma and fourteen of her children take the train down to Arkansas to help Pa's brother Arthur Hunnicutt whose farm is in danger of foreclosing. The brood arrives shortly after brother has been fooled into letting Northern gangsters rent his unused barn where they set up a moonshine unit and plan to take over the local bootlegging racket. Ma meets brother's longtime finance Una Merkel who is still waiting after twenty years to walk down the aisle and decides to help make Una's dream a reality.
Despite being very late in the series this is an often quite funny entry even without Kilbride's presence. Arthur Hunnicutt, a well-known character player of the era, as brother is just as shiftless as Pa and is very good. It's also delightful to see the endearing actress Una Merkel with a role this large late into her career, she's as lovable as ever and has even a poignant moment or two when, helping Ma out with her brood, she wistfully realizes it's "a little late" for her to have children of her own even if she can manage to become another Mrs. Kettle. There's also a fun segment on the train where Ma and her "young-un's" manage to wreac havoc and particularly annoy another passenger, Elvia Allman, who a decade later would create a memorable hillbilly character of her own, belligerent Elverna Bradshaw on multiple episodes of "The Beverly Hillbillies". I particularly enjoyed this segment: who hasn't been in Allman's shoes when a stranger talks your ear off telling you all sorts of information you are not remotely interested in or are encouraging them to proceed, and a particularly funny and real bit is when Ma's youngest, listening in with gusto, adds to the patter with intimate family details even chatterbox Ma doesn't want shared. Best of all are some terrifically trained animals on brother Kettle's farm, particularly a unforgettable galosses wearing duck and there's a hilarious segment when the whole barnyard gets drunk getting into the dumped mash from the corn squeezing.
Of course, the gangster plot is absurd (as if there would be big money from moonshine in the 1950's) but then you don't expect credibility from a Kettle film, after all, "Ma" is well into her sixties and her youngest is all of six! Just sit back and enjoy. Marjorie Main remains one of the best character comediennes in film and has a good supporting cast helping her make this little family comedy highly entertaining.
