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Boxing manager 'Square Shooting Murph' (Pat O'Brien) has to get out of town quick after betting against his own boxer in dirty business fraud. He discovers boxing savant farm boy Homer Baston (Wayne Morris) who is haunted by his long-lost mother. Murph and girlfriend Doris Harvey (Joan Blondell) convince him that the boxing publicity would bring his mother to him. When no mother shows up, he threatens to leave boxing and go home. No matter what, Murph needs to come up with a mother.

It is a fun premise. There is a better ending. I would like Murph doing something powerful and emotional to redeem himself after Homer discovers the truth. That would be the more standard way to go. This one is a bit more goofy and I don't see it as happily ever after as it thinks it is.

It was a cute and fun show and I enjoyed it - made me laugh.

A whole lot of the best players that Warner Brothers had under contract got signed for this film. But personally I found the whole thing a bit too much. No one could be as naive as Wayne Morris as The Kid From Kokomo.

Which is where Pat O'Brien fight manager, girlfriend Joan Blondell and trainer Edward Brophy have gone looking for a fighter with a reputed devastating right hand. But the guy whom they were seeking Ward Bond, they see get flattened by farm kid Wayne Morris.

It seems as though Morris was abandoned by his mom at a tender age and never knew his dad. God knows who raised him, but he's going to stay at the farm because even after 22 years mom will come home to claim him.

What to do but get a mother for him so in night court Pat O'Brien finds May Robson an old wino once an actress who has certainly seen better days.

Basically The Kid From Kokomo depends on Morris and Robson recycling roles that they got famous for, Morris in Kid Galahad and Robson from Lady For A Day. But their parts her are pale imitations of the roles from those better known pictures.

The Kid From Kokomo other than Morris's quest for mom is your usual boxing picture. Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell are also in parts they've done a couple dozen times.

Usually with a cast like this I'd be more than generous, but Morris's character for me was so preposterous and so off putting that I can't believe in 1939 people took this any kind of seriously. Morris isn't naive, the guy is positively backward.

I enjoyed this movie, mainly because it is just fun entertainment. Movies in those days lacked the sex, bloody violence and political propaganda compared to today's movies. There was a production code for movies in those days and that required a plot, good writing, good acting to make them very good movies without special effects, etc... Anyway this movie was funny and had a plot, it is worth watching...

I tried my best to dislike this, to see it for what it is: a cheap, quickly made B movie with hackneyed poorly written stereotypes....but I actually enjoyed it.

Sick and tired of being forced to play the same old role over and over again, Joan Blondell finally resigned from Warner Brothers but Jack Warner insisted she fulfil her contractual obligation by making one last film, this one. She'd complained that she was never given any proper dramatic roles but was told that she wasn't employed as an actress but just for her big eyes and big boobs. Everyone believed that this film was going to be dross so Jack Warner insisted that his deserting star would feature in this. If being associated with this wouldn't damage any future prospects of employment for her nothing would! Additionally, out of spite, her role was minimised, a younger female actress was put into the story and to cap it all, she was only given third billing.

It makes me angry that the studio treated this loveliest of all the 1930s actress so badly. That's what made me determined that I'd hate this - I only watched it to see if it was as bad as they said. I was annoyed with myself for actually enjoying this - almost disloyal to the memory of my 1930s crush!

It's hardly a great picture but you quickly begin to like the crassly conceived characters so have to keep watching. You might not want it to be but it's annoyingly engaging. The story (from the pen of a young Dalton Trumbull) is quite different if a little cruel. It's an unedifying endoscopy into the world of boxing promotion. Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell cynically trick a feeble minded, orphaned country bumpkin into becoming a prize fighter by getting an old alcoholic ex-con to pretend to be his doting long-lost mother.

That old woman is the brilliant 80-year old May Robson (amazingly when she was born Disraeli was PM, Charles Dickens was still writing novels and Abraham Lincoln had yet to become president of America!) Although her performance is less impressive than in the fabulous LADY FOR A DAY, she is the real star of this - she imbues class and genuine humour to what otherwise be just another slightly shabby B feature. Poor Joan may have hated this but she'd been in many much worse pictures.