You're Only Young Twice

This is hardly the laugh-fest that the previous reviewer tells us it is. It is mildly amusing, with a good cast and some good performances.

Duncan McRae is very good as the starchy killjoy Professor, intent on curbing the (innocent) fun of the students, and Charles Hawtrey excels as his son.

All in all, it's a pleasant way to spend a wet, Monday afternoon.

Interesting to hear that the previous reviewer bought Ronnie Corbett's Saab, after his death.

I'm sure Ronnie would be VERY interested to hear this as he is still very much alive and kicking! (Nov. 2015).

Maybe the reviewer had had a little too much whiskey, just like Charles Hawtrey's character in the movie?

Charles Hawtrey turns in a terrific comedy performance in this rather sour comedy about unruly students and an unlikable secretary at a college in Scotland.

Story has a new secretary (Diane Hart) arriving at a college where drunken students led by Sheltie (Robert Urquhart) are overdoing a campus celebration, much to the annoyance of a dean (Duncan Macrae) whose son (Hawtrey) is not among them. She works for the college president (Patrick Barr) and intrudes into all the college business.

Sheltie frequents a local bar where students drink, and with his pals gets Hawtrey drunk and engaged to a local floozy. The students go on strike after Sheltie gets expelled, but the secretary wins over the president and the students win.

There's a silly subplot about the bar owner who is really a world-class scholar of Celtic culture (but no one knows who he is).

Charles Hawtrey is very funny as the uptight student (and son of the dean), but his treatment by others is rather mean-spirited. Macrae and Barr are solid. Hart's character is very unlikable as an outright liar and manipulative woman. Urquhart is a decade too old for his role as a student and comes off as being a stupid clod. Others include Joseph Tomelty as the Celtic scholar, Jacqueline Mackenzie as the floozy, Ronnie Corbett as a student, and Arthur Hill as the mystery man.

I am placing this review because someone has given the film a misleading rating of 10 stars together with a very long winded review tending to suggest the film is hilarious. I watch hundreds of old films. At best this film offers some amusement. So in summary. Its OK. Type of film you may watch on a wet, cold Sunday afternoon when not much else to do and you cant be bothered getting out of bed to get the TV remote control to turn the channel. I wanted to end my comments there but it appears that I have to write ten lines of text. So what do I say now. Well, it was interesting to see a very young Ronnie Corbett - he hasn't grown much !

Beginning with crowds of young people (played by genuine Glasgow students) misbehaving in the streets, this looks as though it may be an early British teen movie. Far from it. Based on a 1939 play, "What Say They?", by James Bridie, it concerns the stuffy hierarchy of the university. It's probable that the original play script was so dull and unfunny that all the material with Charles Hawtrey as a professor's son has been added. Hawtrey spends about half the film falling about drunk and this is a relatively skilled comic performance. The tedious dialogue whenever he is not on screen provokes no interest. Robert Urquhart must be the squarest student since "Tom Brown's Schooldays". It's no surprise he doesn't get the girl. She's pert Diane Hart, who seems to be a modern miss with ideas of her own; but as soon as marriage is proposed, she reverts to stereotype. In his first film "Ronald" Corbett has little to do. He was to be discovered 15 years later.

Having just watched this film I'm left wondering what was the point of it? It was about a bunch of university students and a university porter, the students didn't get on with one of the senate and the porter was really a well regarded writer. The storyline was confused without any clear sense of direction.

All the cast seemed to put in a reasonable amount of effort, but the script didn't allow us to like any of the characters. Charles Hawtrey, of Carry On fame, always struggled for laughs when he was playing 'a boy' and he shambles through half of this film pretending to be drunk.

I guess this film was made when most of the population had never been to university. Perhaps then film makers could get away with students having an average age of 30+, but today it looks plain silly.

Really this film had no redeeming features, other than I think it was filmed in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. There are many better ways to spend 80 minutes.