Out West with the Hardys

This was a fun diversion for the Hardy Family viewer. The Hardy family as the title suggests heads out west. In the west Andy ends up meeting a girl, but for once not a love interest as she is about half his age. The youngster holds her own against Andy as he tries to be a cowboy. These two characters pretty well carry the film. The rest is fairly predictable with the sister meeting a love interest and Judge Hardy trying to help his friend hang onto the ranch through legal maneuvers.

Judge Hardy gets a letter from a former flame. She needs legal help for her family's Arizona ranch. Their neighbor holds their water rights. Andy (Mickey Rooney) is getting conceited. Mom is obsessed with spring cleaning and growing frustrated. The Judge decides to bring the whole family out west for a break.

Judy Garland is gone. Andy takes a step back. The whole franchise takes a step back. At least, Andy gets his comeuppance in the end and Jake has some fun with him. This is not the best idea. It's an excuse for Andy to dress up as a cowboy and for Marian to kiss one. This is basically a family sitcom deciding to go on a trip to spice things up to start the new season.

Andy obnoxious and conceited letter in basketball??

When the story begins, Andy is behaving weirdly....even for Andy. He's quite obnoxious and conceited...and Polly is naturally angry at him. Why is he so fat-headed? Apparently, he just got his high school letter for...basketball(!!!!!). Now I know that basketball players were not as tall in the good old days, but at 5'2", hearing that he's a star basketball player is pretty weird and hard to believe.

In the midst of this, Judge Hardy announces he's taking the family on vacation at a dude ranch. For the judge, it's a working vacation and he's there to try to help the owners in a water rights dispute. Along the way, Andy's sister falls in love with a widower and Andy hangs around with a precocious kid (Virginia Weidler). How all this works out is for you to learn when you see this one.

This is a pretty good installment of the series....not among the best but still quite enjoyable.

Judge Hardy and his family take off for Arizona when one of dad's close friends runs into some legal trouble and may lose her ranch. The elder daughter Marian falls for a foreman at the ranch (Gordon Jones), whose 8-year-old tomboy daughter "Jake" starts to get a crush of sorts on Andy Hardy. This wasn't an exceptional entry but it has its moments of comedy (Jake tries to sabotage Marian's efforts to impress the girl's father) and drama (Andy unintentionally causes Jake's favorite horse to break its leg). I am beginning to become aware already that Mickey Rooney mugs to wild extremes as Andy Hardy.

**1/2 out of ****

Lewis Stone as Judge James Hardy is not one ever to not answer the plea of an old friend, in this case an old friend he might have been romantically involved with back in the day. Nana Bryant has written to Stone from Arizona where she and husband Ralph Morgan own a ranch they're about to lose because their neighbor Thurston Hall won't renew their water rights without a hefty price interest that would break them. So the nuclear family Hardys, Stone, Fay Holden, Mickey Rooney, and Cecilia Parker go off Out West With The Hardys.

Coincidentally enough it's at a time where both Hardy children are having some romantic difficulties. When are they ever not in this series? But Parker is taking a liking to widower ranch foreman Gordon Jones while his daughter Virginia Weidler show Rooney there's a lot more to being a cowboy than dressing the part.

Although this Hardy family film has a lot of good points to it. It's bogged down by the fact Mickey really acts like a jerk in this one. As usual trying to show off. This is one time a father and son talk just was not the answer, the Mick needed a trip to the woodshed.

As it always does everything works out between Mickey finding a solution to the mess he makes, Parker deciding that maybe she's a city girl after all, and Fay Holden of all people coming up with the solution to the problems of her husband's old girl friend.

Not the best of the Hardy series, but all right.