You're Only Young Twice

Having just watched this film I'm left wondering what was the point of it? It was about a bunch of university students and a university porter, the students didn't get on with one of the senate and the porter was really a well regarded writer. The storyline was confused without any clear sense of direction.

All the cast seemed to put in a reasonable amount of effort, but the script didn't allow us to like any of the characters. Charles Hawtrey, of Carry On fame, always struggled for laughs when he was playing 'a boy' and he shambles through half of this film pretending to be drunk.

I guess this film was made when most of the population had never been to university. Perhaps then film makers could get away with students having an average age of 30+, but today it looks plain silly.

Really this film had no redeeming features, other than I think it was filmed in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. There are many better ways to spend 80 minutes.

Beginning with crowds of young people (played by genuine Glasgow students) misbehaving in the streets, this looks as though it may be an early British teen movie. Far from it. Based on a 1939 play, "What Say They?", by James Bridie, it concerns the stuffy hierarchy of the university. It's probable that the original play script was so dull and unfunny that all the material with Charles Hawtrey as a professor's son has been added. Hawtrey spends about half the film falling about drunk and this is a relatively skilled comic performance. The tedious dialogue whenever he is not on screen provokes no interest. Robert Urquhart must be the squarest student since "Tom Brown's Schooldays". It's no surprise he doesn't get the girl. She's pert Diane Hart, who seems to be a modern miss with ideas of her own; but as soon as marriage is proposed, she reverts to stereotype. In his first film "Ronald" Corbett has little to do. He was to be discovered 15 years later.

Charles Hawtrey turns in a terrific comedy performance in this rather sour comedy about unruly students and an unlikable secretary at a college in Scotland.

Story has a new secretary (Diane Hart) arriving at a college where drunken students led by Sheltie (Robert Urquhart) are overdoing a campus celebration, much to the annoyance of a dean (Duncan Macrae) whose son (Hawtrey) is not among them. She works for the college president (Patrick Barr) and intrudes into all the college business.

Sheltie frequents a local bar where students drink, and with his pals gets Hawtrey drunk and engaged to a local floozy. The students go on strike after Sheltie gets expelled, but the secretary wins over the president and the students win.

There's a silly subplot about the bar owner who is really a world-class scholar of Celtic culture (but no one knows who he is).

Charles Hawtrey is very funny as the uptight student (and son of the dean), but his treatment by others is rather mean-spirited. Macrae and Barr are solid. Hart's character is very unlikable as an outright liar and manipulative woman. Urquhart is a decade too old for his role as a student and comes off as being a stupid clod. Others include Joseph Tomelty as the Celtic scholar, Jacqueline Mackenzie as the floozy, Ronnie Corbett as a student, and Arthur Hill as the mystery man.

This is hardly the laugh-fest that the previous reviewer tells us it is. It is mildly amusing, with a good cast and some good performances.

Duncan McRae is very good as the starchy killjoy Professor, intent on curbing the (innocent) fun of the students, and Charles Hawtrey excels as his son.

All in all, it's a pleasant way to spend a wet, Monday afternoon.

Interesting to hear that the previous reviewer bought Ronnie Corbett's Saab, after his death.

I'm sure Ronnie would be VERY interested to hear this as he is still very much alive and kicking! (Nov. 2015).

Maybe the reviewer had had a little too much whiskey, just like Charles Hawtrey's character in the movie?

Diane Hart arrives at the very Scottish, very Presbyterian university in search of her uncle, Joseph Tomelty. During the Troubles, he was a revolutionary poet. He is believed to have gone to America, but he really is the gate porter of the university under a fake name. He also has a few businesses in town that arouse the ire of bluestocking Professor Duncan Macrae. Due to the usual sort of mixup that takes place in comedies, she is mistaken for the woman who is to become the secretary of university president Patrick Barr.

Miss Hart is an attractive woman with a smoky creak in her voice, and in the manner of this sort of comedy, she succors the weak, stands up to the tyrant, and captures the heart of Barr. Is he too set in his ways to do anything about it?

The story is underpinned by the growing Post-War prosperity that was cracking the old facade of Scotland. Time has passed, and nowadays Scotland's issues are of an entirely different type, but as a classical farce, it's buttressed by some good writing, some fine comic performances by the likes of Charles Hawtrey, and some good location shooting at Glasgow University.... whether that's meant to be the actual site of the movie or not.