ANDY HARDY'S BLONDE TROUBLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 289, 5 January 1945, Page 17

ANDY HARDY'S BLONDE TROUBLE

(M.G-M)

N which Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) takes another two steps forward and one step back in the prolonged process of growing up. He is now at cal-

ledge — Wainwright Calledge, the alma mater of his dear old judicial dad (Lewis Stone). This is a little more a seat of higher learning than most similar Hollywood institutions; several students are actually seen poring over their books; but the majority are still preoccupied with the art of campus flirtation (technically known as "smooching’’). Andy is a great advocate of smooching, and tries assiduously to practise it from the moment he encounters three smoochable blondes on the train journey to Wainwright. One of them (Bonita Granville) is a very grown-up young woman, who lectures him on the juvenile nature of the smooch, and advises

him to try to be his age. But the other two blondes are, on the surface anyway, eminently smoochworthy. Unfortunately, they are identical twins (Lynn and Lee Wilde), and although one of them is as smooch-conscious as young Andy himself, the other is, in her own words, the "conservative type." The fact that Andy cannot, at any given moment, tell which is which, and does not indeed realise for some time that there are two of them, involves him in much callow embarrassment, and lands him in trouble with his Dean (Herbert Marshall). | Several attitudes are possible towards Andy Hardy. You may think that he is bumptious and abominate all his works; you may think that he is bumptious, but still tolerate him because he often manages to be amusing and sometimes true to life; or you may think he is not bumptious at all, but a very agreeable young man. My own inclination has for a long time been towards the second, or middle-of-the-road attitude. Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble gives me no reason to change it.