Mickey Rooney is back to his awkward gawking, after taking a break from it in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, in this eleventh installment of the Andy Hardy movies: Life Begins for Andy Hardy. He's a high school graduate now, and instead of pleasing his parents, Lewis Stone and Fay Holden, by going to college, he decides to go to New York City and get a job. Even with his good friend Judy Garland there to help him get out of scrapes, the big bad city is scarier than he thought. . .
I guess after you've made ten silly Andy Hardy movies, you're desperate to put a little drama into the franchise. Even though Mickey Rooney lets his hormones run as rampant as his pocketbook and acts like an open-mouthed idiot whose been kicked in the head by a mule one too many times, you can't help but feel sorry for him halfway through the movie when he discovers the ups and downs of life. I wasn't expecting these teen comedies to take such a dark turn. Poor Mickey, only twenty-one at the time, gave a very convincing performance of never having seen anything upsetting before.
This isn't the best Andy Hardy movie to start with, but if you like the franchise, you'll probably want to stick with Andy as he muddles through life as a grown-up.
I guess after you've made ten silly Andy Hardy movies, you're desperate to put a little drama into the franchise. Even though Mickey Rooney lets his hormones run as rampant as his pocketbook and acts like an open-mouthed idiot whose been kicked in the head by a mule one too many times, you can't help but feel sorry for him halfway through the movie when he discovers the ups and downs of life. I wasn't expecting these teen comedies to take such a dark turn. Poor Mickey, only twenty-one at the time, gave a very convincing performance of never having seen anything upsetting before.
This isn't the best Andy Hardy movie to start with, but if you like the franchise, you'll probably want to stick with Andy as he muddles through life as a grown-up.