Login
Home
92 Lists
1531 Reviews
Collections
“I fully admit to being skeptical about the Andy Hardy films. I don’t mind a little sugar, but there’s nothing sour to offset the sweet about these films. They’re pleasing little lies about a piece of Americana that likely never existed. A better written and acted The Brady Bunch, if you will. ” read more
“Small town American was never as picture perfect and saccharine as it was in the Andy Hardy series. There’s the stoic but supportive father (Lewis Stone), fretful loving mother (Fay Holden), nicely combative older sister (Cecilia Parker), and Andy, the teenager on the right side of mischief-making” read more
“The first pairing of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland finds the pair playing second fiddle to a waifish British male youth. No, not Freddie Bartholomew, who seems tailor-made for the lead role and was mysteriously dropped, but Ronald Sinclair, a carbon-copy of Bartholomew. Sinclair’s lacking in char” read more
“Judy Garland’s not a girl, not yet a woman in Little Nellie Kelly, an oddball film that has her playing both mother and daughter. Loosely based on the George M. Cohan play of the same name, Garland finds herself stuck between the opposing male forces of her life in both incarnations and a metric t” read more
“Rarely has 75 minutes feel so interminable as it does during Listen, Darling. The plot is a bit of nonsense that plays like the lamest of sitcom conceits: two siblings (Judy Garland and Scotty Beckett) enlist their best friend (Freddie Bartholomew) to help kidnap their mom (Mary Astor) so she doesn” read more
“There sure is a lot here. Broadway Melody of 1938 is one of those “something for everyone” entertainments that winds up being of little value to anyone. It doesn’t settle into its backstage theatrical story, its supporting plot about an aging performer is just there, and there’s a lot of tim” read more
“A cinematic oddity that splices together campus comedy, sports underdog (football, in this case), and manic musical into… something. I’m not quite sure what it all is, but it’s a lot of something that’s diverting if thin. There’s wisecracking Patsy Kelly and an effete Jack Haley as a marri” read more
“It’s impossible to separate the final version of The Pirate from its fractured, turbulent production. Star Judy Garland was absent for roughly 75% of its shooting schedule as her marriage to director Vincente Minnelli crumbled, her pill addictions took a stronger hold on her life, and her mental/e” read more
“The last of their four musical films together, Girl Crazy takes an established property and has Mickey and Judy playing honest-to-goodness characters rather than taking their established personas and building around that. Girl Crazy ends up being one of their strongest films for it. Of course, the G” read more
“The weakest of the four “let’s put on a show” musicals Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made; Babes on Broadway ironically also contains some of the best individual materials of the four films. But there’s no getting around a few simple facts: Babes on Broadway is too long and convoluted, and ” read more
“Backyard musical number two from Mickey and Judy, Strike Up the Band is bigger than Babes in Arms but not necessarily better. Make no mistake, this is a hugely entertaining affair with some delightful set pieces and a fun group of supporting players, but a certain sense of proportion starts to weigh” read more
“The original Brother Bear was a neutral object that never quite justified its existence and was like watching studio groupthink in action. Three years later comes a direct-to-video sequel, imaginatively titled Brother Bear 2, and it’s just as much of an indifferent object as the first. Hell, this ” read more