Local Boy Makes Good (1931)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

First, I have to disagree strongly with one of our reviewers who claimed that Joe E. Brown was "a minor film comic". Really? In 1933 and 1936, he was one of the top ten money makers in American cinema.It's a tricky business introducing pathos into a film comedy. How much is too much? In this film the pathos outbalances the comedy...but it works. True, this is not one of Brown's funniest films, but it may be his most endearing portrayal -- a college botanist who is remarkably timid, especially around girls. Ironically, Brown was 42 when he played a college student here, but his real natural athletic ability made him seem far younger.Most viewers probably won't recognize any of the other actors in the film, but they all do what they need to do to make this film so much more substantial than Brown's films even one year previous.The film is humorous rather than out-and-out funny, but Brown's acting is probably better here.I enjoyed it a lot!

Despite the other reviewer's opinion, as far as pathos goes, this is easily one of Joe E. Brown's best films, and easily outshines "The Freshman" (which, imho, was one of Lloyd's poorest films).We've all been in situations where we're afraid of something/someone, and have to meet it, face it, if we are to move ahead in Life. Brown is the Every Man in this film, and we can all identify with him. (Much moreso than Lloyd).Dorothy Lee & Ruth Brown are (as they would say in the 30's)"easy on the eyes", as well (!) and it's interesting to hear Lee talk about "sex", "libido", etc back then.

A LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD when a shy botany student joins the University of Ohio's track team to impress the beauty queen he idolizes.Comic Joe E. Brown does the best he can in this not-very-funny collegiate comedy, going over the same ground Harold Lloyd plowed to greater effect during silent days. It is not Brown's fault, the script is almost unrelenting in denying him any significant laughs. Not until the final sequence, when Brown must prove himself at the big track meet or forever live in ignominy, does he come into his element - with the help of a pretty girl's kiss and a strong shot of alcohol. Even the intensely annoying rear screen projection cannot destroy the fun of watching Joe ham it up.Dorothy Lee, temporarily escaped from Wheeler & Woolsey, plays the girl of Joe's dreams. As ever, she is kewpie-doll cute and it is great to see her, but her role as a psychology student desperate to engage with Joe's emerging libido is rather bizarre and a bit risqué. Easier to swallow is lovely Ruth Hall, the coed who admires Brown in silence. Edward Woods is Miss Lee's bullying boyfriend who can't wait to dig his spikes into Brown's flesh. Edward J. Nugent plays the team captain who befriends Joe after witnessing his remarkable sprinting ability.Movie mavens will recognize Maude Eburne as a sympathetic maid.

The plot, the budget, the playtime - even the slapstick - are modest in scope. As a result, the lead four actors and a camera with wonderful eye had what seems to me a "hands-free" opportunity to actually act and create a work with poetic charm. Joey and co-players are young, attractive, and exuberant, and share their humor with us across a gulf of seventy years. But that humor's consistently the stuff of which good comedy is made: incongruous play with high-tone ideas (Freudian dream analysis, botany), and characters battling their way through seas of foibles, inhibitions, mistaken word choices, vanities, and longings for things totally inappropriate. From works like this evolved - to my mind - all the better comedies to follow, from My Friend Godfrey, to the Pierre Richard films, the best of Albaladejo and his superb team, Shall we Dansu, Woody Allen's best works, Mad, Mad, Mad, World, or films like The Loved One, or Christmas Vacation. This may be a low budget film, but its ideas are not cheap - they target a common, human soul riddled with weaknesses and self-doubts we all share. And wow! Did I like Joe E. Brown and his fabulous colleagues in Midsummer Night's Dream - what a treasure.What a shame Hollywood all but dropped the baton - trading delicacy off in exchange for a bullying big-industry get-rich marketing clique to exploit ad tedium a totally different lowest common denominator.