Courtship of Andy Hardy, The (1942)
*** (out of 4)
The twelfth entry in the series finds Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) in all sorts of trouble. For starters, he decides to open his own towing company but after a freak accident he's accused of stealing the man's car, which gets him a date in court. He's also got two or three different women he wants but Judge (Lewis Stone) asks him to take a less popular girl (Donna Reed) to a dance so that she can try and forget her parents rocky divorce. Also troubling the Hardy's the the sisters desire to wear more liberal clothing. I had heard mixed things about this entry but for the most part I found it to be entertaining even if it didn't have as many laughs as previous entries that I've seen. I think, for the most part, the film is a straight drama as there are some pretty dark elements scattered throughout. Not only to we have the ugly divorce harming a child but we even have a drunk scene where Judge gets to tell everything a moral story about it. The majority of the film is centered around the "ugly girl turned pretty" storyline, which doesn't really work here too well as Donna Reed looked good in both forms of her character. They really didn't try to ugly her up very much so it's hard to really understand why no one wanted her already. The performances are all what you'd expect with Rooney being as jumpy and lively as ever and Stone coming through with that stern but fair approach. Reed makes quite an impression in her early appearance.
