Let's Go Collegiate

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.

Tolerable time-waster notable mainly for featuring at least two cast members who went on to conquer better things. The story: the never-seen star rower Bob Terry has been confiscated by the army, and two of his teammates pull the old switcharoo using a random but burly guy they meet (Frank Sully) who, unknown to them, is wanted by the law (he's a safe-cracker). Not only do Frankie and Tad have to overcome this monkey's seasickness (using mothballs?) they also must make the guy smart so he won't flunk biology and get kicked off the rowing team. Helping them is Martan Moreland, who's responsible for much of the film's laughs - "Take it easy, Mr Frankie, you ain't playin' around with no 8-ball!"

Joining the fun are Gale Storm who went on to TV fame with MY LITTLE MARGIE and Frank Faylen from DOBIE GILLIS and Disney's THE MONKEY'S UNCLE. Watch for a scene where Faylen punches a guy in the chin, causing him to fall backwards. TMU features a scene that parallels this one, only it's Annette punching Faylen, causing him to fall backward - accompanied by a hilarious musical sound effect. Other comic scenes of note are where the absent-minded biology prof can't find his frog and wonders if he accidentally ate it for lunch (and this guy has the nerve to flunk students?) - and Moreland explaining "metatarsus" to girlfriend. Keye Luke from the Charlie Chan series adds a multicultural element.

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!

As this is a Monogram Picture, cheap sets, newsreel footage and lousy editing are a given. But the cast does try to pull this one through and they only miss by a hair.

Let's Go Collegiate has Frankie Darro, Jack Moran, and Keye Luke as fraternity brothers who receive some really bad news. Darro is on the rowing team and the new anchor gets his draft notice before the big match. So these guys try to come up with a substitute and they do with Frank Sully. One sight of him hoisting a safe and they've got their guy.

The trouble is that he's a lunkhead, but that could be passed over with the explanation of special grades for athletes. Teaching him how to row is another matter, he's got a phobia about water. Sully as the new big man on campus is also scoring with the women, their women like Marcie Jones and Gale Storm.

Let's Go Collegiate is a pleasant enough film, but had it been done at a big studio it sure would have been better.

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