Ma Kettle was a volcano enough in the sticks; Imagine her in Hawaii! Here, Ma and Pa go to Honolulu to "aide" Pa's cousin (Loring Smith), a tired businessman much in need of a rest. He thinks that "P.A. Kettle" is savvy enough to run the business while he takes a long summer nap. Pa does, accidentally of course, encountering the typical string of villains that they did every time they left their modern model home. Daughter Lori Nelson tags along and finds romance with Pa's cousin's assistant, the handsome Byron Palmer.
Mildly amusing, this starts with typical Kettle shenanigans where the uppity Birdy Hicks (Esther Dale) and prickly spinster Dorothy Neumann get the brunt of the Kettle kid's pranksterish ways when they get caught in their sprinkler system. If Ma and Pa think the heat is on at home, just wait until they arrive in the land of pineapples and pure cane sugar where they encounter an amusing couple who are the Hawaiian version of themselves. Hawaiian born legend Hilo Hattie (so delightful in "Song of the Islands") is "Mama Lotus", who hasn't quite reached Ma's record of fifteen kids, but has run out of months to name any future ones. Charles Lung is "Papa Lotus", the retiring, rather lazy husband who shows Pa a few tricks or two about getting things done while napping. It's too bad that the Kettle kids weren't there to aide the Lotus kids while Ma and the Lotus parents set out to rescue Pa from some crooks who have kidnapped him. Hilo Hattie gets an adorable musical number, while "Ma" herself gets into hula gear in a luau finale.
Just like "Gilligan's Island's" Jim Backus had several years before, "G.I." veteran Russell Johnson is one of the villains, while "Bewitched's" Mabel Albertson "has one of her headaches" as the snooty wife of a bank president who hosts a cocktail party that Ma makes a shambles out of. It's all harmless fun, but sad to say, this was the last entry that Percy Kilbride would appear in. Marjorie Main went on alone for the next two films, rather shabbily I must say. Without Kilbride, the series was a pale imitation of itself, even if the formula had already started to run out of steam.
Mildly amusing, this starts with typical Kettle shenanigans where the uppity Birdy Hicks (Esther Dale) and prickly spinster Dorothy Neumann get the brunt of the Kettle kid's pranksterish ways when they get caught in their sprinkler system. If Ma and Pa think the heat is on at home, just wait until they arrive in the land of pineapples and pure cane sugar where they encounter an amusing couple who are the Hawaiian version of themselves. Hawaiian born legend Hilo Hattie (so delightful in "Song of the Islands") is "Mama Lotus", who hasn't quite reached Ma's record of fifteen kids, but has run out of months to name any future ones. Charles Lung is "Papa Lotus", the retiring, rather lazy husband who shows Pa a few tricks or two about getting things done while napping. It's too bad that the Kettle kids weren't there to aide the Lotus kids while Ma and the Lotus parents set out to rescue Pa from some crooks who have kidnapped him. Hilo Hattie gets an adorable musical number, while "Ma" herself gets into hula gear in a luau finale.
Just like "Gilligan's Island's" Jim Backus had several years before, "G.I." veteran Russell Johnson is one of the villains, while "Bewitched's" Mabel Albertson "has one of her headaches" as the snooty wife of a bank president who hosts a cocktail party that Ma makes a shambles out of. It's all harmless fun, but sad to say, this was the last entry that Percy Kilbride would appear in. Marjorie Main went on alone for the next two films, rather shabbily I must say. Without Kilbride, the series was a pale imitation of itself, even if the formula had already started to run out of steam.