El idilio de Andy Hardy

Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone) is in charge of the contentious Nesbit divorce. Their daughter Melodie Nesbit (Donna Reed) had become a ward of the state. The Judge orders that she sees her father but she refuses. Marian Hardy (Cecilia Parker) is back home from the big city. Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) is operating a tow truck and gets mistaken in a car theft. He's also not happy with Marian's new city style.

The franchise seems to be going back to the basics. It's back to the family. It's back to the small town of Carvel. It's back to the comfort of the all-knowing Judge. It does try to deal with the changing styles and divorce. It also has newcomer Donna Reed in one of her early roles. I do wonder if the franchise is getting stale. It's the 12th of 16 movies in the series.

Many skeptics scoff at these types of movies, where America is great, clean and pure, where problems have simply solutions. Simply, yes, we complicate things and movies like this remind us how fine life can be.

Andy Hardy movies are just this, fine and simple.

When this film was first screened, viewers were aware of two major changes since the last Andy Hardy film. First, Mickey Rooney had married Ava Gardner. Secondly, the country had just entered World War II after the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor. One might surmise that they were curious to see Rooney and they yearned for the comfort of an Andy Hardy film to remind them of life before the harsh realities of wartime.

The stories in this film have to do with the return of sister Marian to the small-town life of Carvel and a divorce case being handled by Judge Hardy.

Marian rebels against the provincial ways of Carvel, trying to assert her new-found sensibilities and her freedom as an adult.

Meanwhile, Judge Hardy involves Andy in his case, asking him to date the socially awkward daughter of the bitterly divorcing parents. The daughter, Melodie, is played by Donna Reed in her sixth film role. At age twenty or twenty-one, Miss Reed plays a younger girl who has never been on a date. Her performance is excellent. In only four years, she will appear in "It's A Wonderful Life'.

As always, this Hardy family film delivers morals to warm the heart and, perhaps, to remind America of its central values. The virtues of the family unit and sobriety are promoted quite strongly.

The central themes compete. An ancillary story about a mail order purchase by Mrs. Hardy serves to further complicate the narrative. Still, this is a satisfying Hardy story with a pleasant resolution.

It's not surprising to discover that one of the teen movie genre's silliest plot devices, the Ugly Pretty Girl, was around even during Hollywood's Golden Age. The Ugly Pretty Girl usually involves taking some drop-dead gorgeous starlet and putting her in glasses, frumpy clothes, and an unbecoming hairstyle and then having all the other characters act like she is physically repulsive. Of course, as the movie progresses, the glasses come off and a new hairstyle and fashionable wardrobe allow everyone to "discover" that she's really a knock-out! The absurdity of this plot device is that despite the glasses, frumpy clothes and hair- it's ALWAYS obvious that the girl is beautiful!

I used to think that Rachel Leigh Cook in "She's All That" made the most absurd Ugly Pretty Girl. However, that opinion changed upon seeing "The Courtship of Andy Hardy." This movie is another moralistic episode of the small town lives of Judge Hardy and his family. Here Judge Hardy's son, Andy (Mickey Rooney), finds himself in trouble with the law when he is accused of stealing a car. (Yes, Andy Hardy is threatened with being charged with grand theft auto in a sub-plot that must be seen to be believed.) Andy turns to his dad for help, and Judge Hardy decides he will help Andy if Andy helps him.

Judge Hardy is overseeing a nasty custody/child support battle between a divorced couple who are using their only child, Melodie (Donna Reed), to attack one another. Judge Hardy sees that this is having a terrible effect on Melodie who has become a very withdrawn and bitter teen. The Judge knows that he can talk to the parents and get them to understand that their fighting is harming their daughter, but he wants Andy to show Melodie a good time in order to break through her loneliness and bitterness. It is here where the movie goes off the deep-end because Andy thinks Melodie is a "droop" and finds the idea of having to hang out with her to be a terrible burden.

The problem with that is that young Donna Reed (she can't be much older than 20 here) was a stunningly beautiful woman and this movie does virtually nothing to hide that fact except put her in a frumpy dress. (They don't even have her wearing glasses!) Yet we're supposed to believe that Andy and all his buddies find her unattractive. The scene were Andy is paying his friends to dance with her takes the Ugly Pretty Girl plot device into the realm of the surreal.

Overall, this an OK entry into the Andy Hardy series. However, it's notable only for its taking the Ugly Pretty Girl plot device to one of its more ludicrous pinnacles.

The Courtship of Andy Hardy might be my absolute favorite in the entire Andy Hardy series. It's not silly, but instead offers serious lessons to the audience as Judge Hardy tries to do good both in the courtroom and within the entire town. In this one, Lewis Stone asks his son Mickey Rooney to date young Donna Reed to give her some happiness while her parents are involved in a difficult divorce case, but as you might suspect-because Andy Hardy is hormone-crazed and because Donna is very beautiful-what starts out as a fake romance turns into real feelings. At the end of their first date, during which Mickey has to literally pay other fellas to dance with her, she tells him how wonderful a time she's had. Her face lights up, she smiles, she looks like Kiera Knightley, and you can actually see Mickey fall in love with her in the seconds before he kisses her.

Meanwhile, Marian-aka Cecilia Parker-returns from New York sophisticated and modern, and she shocks her family with her new makeup and clothing. She wears a nightgown as a dress, and everyone gives their own little quips as to how improper it is. The judge says it's "dizzy", Mama Hardy claims she thought her daughter was only joking, Aunt Millie quotes philosophy, and Andy rattles off everything from "Is that your stomach staring at me?" to "I can see right through you, old girl." Yes, she has her hair dolled up and quotes the got-it-flaunt-it mantra, but doesn't anyone remember her party dress five years earlier in You're Only Young Once? It was a very revealing, practically see-through number, and Lewis Stone told her she looked beautiful. Their revenge is hilarious: when Marian's fancy gentleman caller comes to dinner, everyone dresses in their nightclothes. "Hot diggity dog!" Fay Holden grins after rattling off a slew of modern slang.

The theme of this movie seems to be the generational clash, and during one of their man-to-man talks, Mickey and Lewis compare slang. "You can say that again," Mickey mutters, and immediately Lewis bristles. "Why should I say it again? I just said it!" The clash within the Hardy family reflects the clash between Donna's parents, and anyone else in the audience whose home might be or about to become broken. Rather than being outwardly comical, The Courtship of Andy Hardy is witty and clever, with somber lessons and wise words from Judge Hardy. Plus, it introduces Donna Reed to Hollywood audiences! If you've never seen an Andy Hardy movie, you'll love this one-but it'll probably spoil you for the rest of them.