You're Only Young Twice

Beginning with crowds of young people (played by genuine Glasgow students) misbehaving in the streets, this looks as though it may be an early British teen movie. Far from it. Based on a 1939 play, "What Say They?", by James Bridie, it concerns the stuffy hierarchy of the university. It's probable that the original play script was so dull and unfunny that all the material with Charles Hawtrey as a professor's son has been added. Hawtrey spends about half the film falling about drunk and this is a relatively skilled comic performance. The tedious dialogue whenever he is not on screen provokes no interest. Robert Urquhart must be the squarest student since "Tom Brown's Schooldays". It's no surprise he doesn't get the girl. She's pert Diane Hart, who seems to be a modern miss with ideas of her own; but as soon as marriage is proposed, she reverts to stereotype. In his first film "Ronald" Corbett has little to do. He was to be discovered 15 years later.