Local Boy Makes Good

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.

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.

"Local Boy Makes Good" is a fine entry on Brown's resume.

As has been mentioned by other reviewers, this movie's subject matter has been covered better before (i.e., Lloyd's "The Freshman"); however, one should keep in mind that this movie is an early talkie, so it provides opportunities for gags that weren't generally available to earlier filmmakers, and Brown makes the best of these new opportunities.

Having come from the stage, Joe E. Brown is as much a verbal comedian as he is a physical one. Both of these comedic attributes shine in this film.

I am not a big Brown fan. I've always viewed him as a minor film comic, albeit near the top of the minor film-comedian list. He achieved film popularity during his middle age (he was nearly 40 when this early-in-his-film-career movie was made). No sooner had he got his movie career rolling along than it was time for the studios to move him out and bring in younger blood. Having said this, I enjoyed this film. It is a pleasant time capsule.

It is pre-Code, so be prepared for and enjoy the many saucy word games and rapid-fire, risqué repartee between Brown and the ladies.

And speaking of the ladies: They are a pair of knock outs to be sure. Lee and Hall acquit themselves in a fine manner.

One last word: If you want to truly appreciate Brown's contribution to Wilder's "Some Like It Hot," I believe you must acquaint yourself with his earliest films. "Hot" is not the movie to "discover" Brown's talents. It's done with "Local Boy," and films like 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.

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.