This miserable picture is a prime candidate for the award of "THE Worst Movie of All Time."
The production was OK; and most of the performances were not bad, given the ridiculous characters and situations the actors were required to portray.
The script and plot, however, defined new depths of "abominable," even by Hollywood standards.
The way the prospective grandparents took over the "production" of bringing forth the offspring, was bad enough, but the way the writers treated Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracey, one of my favorite actors} was nothing short of sadistic.
Here's this well-off, virile "young" (at 51 or so) man, who has just retired and looking forward to a blissful life with time and money to travel, and (whatever) with a gorgeous and (formerly) loving wife (Joan Bennett), and he's not only neglected and pushed into insignificance by the arrival of the new grandchild, but is actually kicked out of the bedroom! Is this hilarious or what?
Skipping over the rest of the mistreatment the poor man suffers, the scripters have the gall actually to have him LOSE the baby in a public park. Having the whole town involved in a frantic search for a "kidnapped" child is considered the funniest thing ever! "Funny as a crutch" is the popular cliche.
In the end, Stanley is so naive that he is bought off by having the kid named after him, as though a businessman who has achieved enough success for early retirement is stupid enough to accept this as ample compensation for months of degradation, belittling, rejection, financial draining, and every other kind of mistreatment they could think of.
I'm often embarrassed by being forced to laugh at some little incident in an otherwise atrocious movie. This one, fortunately, spared me to that humiliation. I never cracked a smile. It was sheer torture all the way through -- a worthy sequel to "Father of the Bride" which it promoted to Second Worst.