Let's Go Collegiate

This is a college comedy of the early '40s that has a big race involved. It involves-no, not football or basketball-but rowing. It seems the one who's supposed to help the team win has been drafted so two of the boys get someone to impersonate him. Turns out he's someone who's not very smart and actually gets sick in the sport so one of these boys gives him some pills. I'll stop there and just say this was quite amusing much of the 62-minute running time and there were also some good songs to pad the proceedings, a couple of which were sung by Gale Storm, later known on TV as "My Little Margie". Mantan Moreland and Keye Luke are also pretty amusing enough if not hilariously so. So on that note, Let's Go Collegiate is worth a look. P.S. By the way, I always like to cite when a player from my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-is in another film and here's it's Frank Faylen as one of the alumni coming for a visit.

Rawley University has never won a national championship in crew rowing. However, a new transfer is expected to make all the difference to the team.... until he's drafted. Crew members Frankie Darrow and Jackie Moran come across Frank Sully, whom they think a truck driver. So they decide to pass him off as their new star. With the connivance of fellow student Keye Luke and whatever role Mantan Moreland plays, they seem to be about to put the hoax over, even though their girls Marcia Mae Jones and Gale Storm each wind up engaged to Sully.

Unlike most movies set at colleges, this one actually has students in class rooms, more than two minutes of time. With Jean Yarborough directing, there's a lot of set-piece comedy at work, and it's all fairly amusing, except for Frank Faylen and Paul Maxey as two alumni. There are three songs, two of them sung by Miss Storm, which are decent if not particularly remarkable.

When the star rower for Rawley University gets drafted, resourceful Frankie Darro (as Frankie Monahan) and student pal Jackie Moran (as Tad) hire husky Frank Sully (as Hercules "Herk" Bevans) to pose as the absent boatman. The plan backfires when Mr. Sully romances his new friends' cute college girlfriends, Gale Storm (as Midge Lawrence) and Marcia Mae Jones (as Bess Martin). Listen for Ms. Storm to sing "Look What You've Done to Me", sidekick Keye Luke (as Buck Wing) to add a little Chinese philosophy, and servile Mantan Moreland (as Jeff) to sing the line "Is you callin' a spade a spade?"

*** Let's Go Collegiate (9/12/41) Jean Yarbrough ~ Frankie Darro, Jackie Moran, Mantan Moreland, Gale Storm

Frankie Darro, Mantan Moreland and Keye Luke in the tale of a college rowing team. It seems that the new guy and hope for the team to win the state championship has been drafted. Not wanting to let the girls down the boys end up getting a guy off the street to pretend to be the great new rower at a party. Unfortunately now that "Herc" has a taste for college life he won't leave and now its up to the guys to get him through classes and to make him into a great rower.

Having the slimmest of plots this movie slips from scene to scene with no clear direction in mind (its better in pieces rather than as a whole). Occasionally it pauses for some passable, but forgettable songs before heading off toward its conclusion, though like much of this movie it seems to have been made up on the spot. Frankie Darro is good as always, Mantan is good but isn't on screen enough. Keye Luke is completely wasted in a role that has him spouting Charlie Chan like bits of wisdom and knocking the coaches glasses off. Its an okay time killer, the sort of thing you put on when you don't want to be taxed on any level. Worth seeing if you run across it

I was torn between giving it a 2 or a 3, I can't see why you'd want to see it in the first place! Even for a cheap B-movie...it's amazingly bad though still watchable.

When the story begins, the new champion rower who is supposed to be coming to a fictional college apparently is NOT coming because he just got drafted. It never was clear why, but Frankie (Frankie Darro) and his friends pick some guy off the street and pass him off as this champion rower. Now the guy looks about 40, is overweight and looks about as athletic as Jabba the Hut...and the entire story continues to make no sense at all. What really makes no sense is that this non-athlete, after just a few times practicing, turns out to be amazing at rowing...as well as...well...you see the film if you really care.

The film is just dumb....and the plot seems as if the writers took a bunch of story ideas, threw them into a hat and picked them out randomly. Honestly...the film is a confusing and silly mess but at least Mantan Moreland is around to provide a few laughs...but only a few!