Love Laughs at Andy Hardy

This one one of the best entrys to the series. The acting was great as usual. Mickey Rooney was his normal, terrific self. Mickey Rooney was simply the best actor that ever lived. The man could do it all. This film was highly entertaining and terrific.!!! If you love the Andy Hardy series you will find it hilarious when he danced with a girl almost twice his size. I truly don't understand why some people have given this film a bad comment. There is simply nothing but great acting and a very very funny story! People who love Mickey Rooney should also check out his films Strike Up The Band, Boys Town, Bill, Stablemates,The Human Comedy. The man was simply amazing! I truly enjoy this entry to the Andy Hardy series. Buy it today! You will not be disappointed!

In the last decades of his life, I came to dislike Mickey Rooney. This was based on what I heard about the man, which gave me the impression that he was a delusional, self-aggrandizing, and self promoting, jackass.

However, I started to reevaluate him after I heard the director of Breakfast At Tiffany's say that he always regretted casting Rooney in that picture.

I had always thought that Rooney did a great job as the Japanese clown character he created for Tiffany's. He seemed to me to be the perfect counterpoint to Hepburn's pseudo-sophisticated New Yorker character.

Then tonight I saw Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946)and I was blown away by Rooney's command of the screen, and the poise he had in the character he created. The movie itself was just OK. But Rooney drew my attention in every frame he was in. For someone as young as he was in that movie, to have that kind of screen presence, really surprised me.

There was a reason he was a big deal back in the day. There was a reason he was a big box office draw back in the day. I have a new found respect for the man who's shadows I see flicker away at me in those old movies.

Tony

...and the Hardys seem as uncomfortable and out of place in 1946 as MGM did, with the changing times that they just couldn't seem to quite tap into from this point forward.

Andy comes home to Carvel after two years as a soldier, and he seems to have matrimony on his mind, specifically his college girlfriend Kay. They didn't call it the baby boom for nothing. There are several endearing and humorous moments, but something is just missing from the old formula. For one thing, everybody is noticeably older. Mickey Rooney is obviously a man in his mid twenties, and Lewis Stone is obviously elderly. They would look rather silly having their old man to man talks at this point, and to a large degree the film avoids that. It does tap into a conversation lots of returning soldiers were probably having with themselves - whether or not to take advantage of that GI bill and finish a college education, or go out into the world without it and start trying to make a mark right now, which everybody had usually done up to this point in time.

One rather humorous incident - Andy is fixed up on a date with a girl who is a foot taller than he is. How did this happen? The guy who did the fixing had them both in the swimming pool at the time, thus avoiding the issue of the height difference.

This will be the last Hardy family film for 12 years, so this is pretty much an end to the franchise.

Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) is home from the war. His mind is mostly stuck on marriage and his college girlfriend Kay Wilson (Bonita Granville). Misunderstandings, chaos, and heartbreak ensue.

Andy is just not Andy when he is focused on one girl. There is something off about this one. This temporarily ends the series until 12 years later when the final movie fails to revive the franchise. I never really liked Kay. She always seems to have one foot out the door. In the previous movie, I would be perfectly happy with Wilde twins. There is a fun gag with a very tall girl. Otherwise, this is fairly blah.

Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946)

** (out of 4)

The fifteenth film in the series has Andy (Mickey Rooney) returning home from the Army and clearing up a few things with his parents (Lewis Stone, Fay Holden) before heading back to college where he plans on marrying the girl (Bonita Granville) he fell in love with from the previous film. Andy's plans don't go as he expects and he gets the idea that college isn't for him and perhaps it would be best to just enter the working world. MGM would make the ill-advised decision to try and bring this series back in 1958 but it's clear this was originally meant to be the final entry in the series. I think it's also clear that the majority of the people involved were probably wishing this movie never happened at all. For starters, director Goldbeck, a newbie to the series, can't recapture the same magic as the earlier films and the entire tone of the film just doesn't seem right. Another problem is the screenplay, which really does seem to be picking up spare pieces at the bottom of a barrel. Nothing on display here is really of any interest as the entire love affair for Andy doesn't really make too much sense if you've seen the previous film in the series and for the life of me I can't understand why on Earth they spent so much time getting the entire story going. The early scenes in Carville are cute because it shows Andy meeting up with a few characters from earlier in the series (but no Polly) but it adds very little. The stuff at college isn't all that interesting either, although one of the few high points comes when Andy gets set up with a girl (Dorothy Ford) who is almost twice his size. Another highlight comes at the very end when Lina Romay shows up in a highly entertaining little sequence. The "final" spill to (originally) end the series works well but it's a shame everything else didn't meet its level of entertainment. Rooney isn't too bad in his role but it really does appear that his heart or mind is somewhere else. Stone and Holden really don't get very much to do and Sara Haden just appears briefly. Granville is as charming as ever but the screenplay doesn't do her any favors either. Fans of the series will certainly still want to check this one out but if you're new to Andy Hardy it's best to avoid this one and check out some of the earlier and better films.