The Freshman's Finish

At one of those typical movie colleges where there are no classes, the co-eds are parading around in their bathing suits, while the freshmen and sophmores concentrate on higher things, like the motorboat race. So fierce is their rivalry that dean Jack Duffy decrees that the winner of the race and his classmates get to go to the dance, while the losers are barred. To prevent Carlyle Moore Jr. From winning, the sophmores force him to torment beat cop Vernon Dent and get thrown in jail. Will their perfidy prevail, and 30-year-old student Vera Steadman have to dance with a sophmore?

Movies like this make me wonder what I was doing half a century ago in college, reading for my courses. Oh, well. The motorboat race is well shot.

In the 1930s, comedies set on college campuses were very popular. To me, this seems pretty weird as the country was in the midst of the Depression...and in the case of "The Freshman's FInish", 1931 was the worst year for unemployment in America. Yet, despiteso many living in poverty, the films show an idealized life...carefree and no indication that the economy was in the dumps. Another odd thing about these films is that NO ONE looks 18-19...yet the film is supposed to be about a rivalry between the Freshmen and Sophomore classes...and yet most of the students look about 25-35! Finally, like most of these films, the students NEVER seem to be in class nor do they ever study! So, while "The Freshman's Finish" suffers from these many problems, it's pretty much the norm for films of the period.

For some reason that makes no sense at all, the college president has been convinced to make a senseless rule that whichever class loses in the big boat race(?) won't be allowed to go to the dance. So the Sophomores do everything they can to cheat their way to victory. Can the Freshmen manage to win in spite of all this shennanigans?

I think Boblipton's review for the film is spot on, though I think he liked the short more than I did. I thought it lacked humor and too often relied on folks way overreacting for laughs...and this just looked silly, not funny. Watchable but nothing more.