Containing only the lightest and most digest-able materials, "Sitting Pretty" is easy to enjoy in a light mood. Often in the past the movies have given suburbia benign pokes in ribs, and this one, a kind of combination of "Claudia" and "Blondie" is among the best of the genre. As usual nothing much happens; a number of people think something, especially cuckoldry, is happening; but the audience, smugly aware that everything's just fine, keeps its happiness and its equanimity.

The only unexpected delight in "Sitting Pretty" is the appearance of Clifton Webb. He turns up by some mistake as a resident baby-sitter, and in the end he is more or less running the happily married couple and their three little boys. Having harvested something of a general education, Webb is on hand to avert every family disaster in the accepted Jeevesian fashion. Only once does his wisdom and teaching fail: that is when one of the little boys gets a bellyache, and this heartrending dialogue ensues: "Well, why don't you stand on your head like Mr. Belvedere said?" "I did, but I only threw up."

But all is not strawberries and sour cream with Mr. Belvedere (Webb). For a while a lot of people think that he is being bad with Maureen O'Hara, and when her husband, Robert Young, objects with some' emphasis, Webb keeps on shredding the lettuce that he has been shredding. "Life must go on," he explains. Finally he writes a book that exposes the little doings of everyone in the suburb, O'Hara and Young make up like sensible folk, and things are generally looking up, with Miss O'Hara expecting a fourth little boy. Three's a plenty, in spite of that coy look she gives us just before the Coming Attraction flashes on the screen.