Local Boy Makes Good

I mean, it's nice to see Joe E. Brown playing a real character (meek, bookish, neurotic) instead of a gag machine, and Ruth Hall is charming, but Dorothy Lee's character is the real surprise here: they could have made her into a shallow, vain beauty, or an idiot, or a b*tch, but instead they made her intelligent and quirky; her "psychoanalysis session" with Brown is certainly the highlight of the picture. **1/2 out of 4.

Despite the other reviewer's opinion, as far as pathos goes, this is easily one of Joe E. Brown's best films, and easily outshines "The Freshman" (which, imho, was one of Lloyd's poorest films).

We've all been in situations where we're afraid of something/someone, and have to meet it, face it, if we are to move ahead in Life. Brown is the Every Man in this film, and we can all identify with him. (Much moreso than Lloyd).

Dorothy Lee & Ruth Brown are (as they would say in the 30's)"easy on the eyes", as well (!) and it's interesting to hear Lee talk about "sex", "libido", etc back then.

A LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD when a shy botany student joins the University of Ohio's track team to impress the beauty queen he idolizes.

Comic Joe E. Brown does the best he can in this not-very-funny collegiate comedy, going over the same ground Harold Lloyd plowed to greater effect during silent days. It is not Brown's fault, the script is almost unrelenting in denying him any significant laughs. Not until the final sequence, when Brown must prove himself at the big track meet or forever live in ignominy, does he come into his element - with the help of a pretty girl's kiss and a strong shot of alcohol. Even the intensely annoying rear screen projection cannot destroy the fun of watching Joe ham it up.

Dorothy Lee, temporarily escaped from Wheeler & Woolsey, plays the girl of Joe's dreams. As ever, she is kewpie-doll cute and it is great to see her, but her role as a psychology student desperate to engage with Joe's emerging libido is rather bizarre and a bit risqué. Easier to swallow is lovely Ruth Hall, the coed who admires Brown in silence. Edward Woods is Miss Lee's bullying boyfriend who can't wait to dig his spikes into Brown's flesh. Edward J. Nugent plays the team captain who befriends Joe after witnessing his remarkable sprinting ability.

Movie mavens will recognize Maude Eburne as a sympathetic maid.

Joe E. Brown was the biggest comic of the late twenties/thirties with Harold Lloyd on the wane and Chaplin in semi-retirement. This is far from one of his best, though it has a Lloyd's "Freshman" feel to it. It has a shy boy/geek tells girl back home, he's a jock. Girl is coming over and he has to prove he's a jock. I remember a few laughs, cheap laughs that is, of the Adam Sandler variety. The trademark yodel/yelp of the star which he did in all his movies is fun when it's done. It has the lack of movement of early talkies and surprisingly, very perfunctory direction by Mervyn Leroy. All in all, 6/10. But I think kids will love it.

The plot, the budget, the playtime - even the slapstick - are modest in scope. As a result, the lead four actors and a camera with wonderful eye had what seems to me a "hands-free" opportunity to actually act and create a work with poetic charm. Joey and co-players are young, attractive, and exuberant, and share their humor with us across a gulf of seventy years. But that humor's consistently the stuff of which good comedy is made: incongruous play with high-tone ideas (Freudian dream analysis, botany), and characters battling their way through seas of foibles, inhibitions, mistaken word choices, vanities, and longings for things totally inappropriate.

From works like this evolved - to my mind - all the better comedies to follow, from My Friend Godfrey, to the Pierre Richard films, the best of Albaladejo and his superb team, Shall we Dansu, Woody Allen's best works, Mad, Mad, Mad, World, or films like The Loved One, or Christmas Vacation. This may be a low budget film, but its ideas are not cheap - they target a common, human soul riddled with weaknesses and self-doubts we all share. And wow! Did I like Joe E. Brown and his fabulous colleagues in Midsummer Night's Dream - what a treasure.

What a shame Hollywood all but dropped the baton - trading delicacy off in exchange for a bullying big-industry get-rich marketing clique to exploit ad tedium a totally different lowest common denominator.