You Can't Always Recapture Magic

Michael_Elliott

Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958)

** (out of 4)

The sixteenth and final film in the series has a middle-aged Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) returning to his hometown where he wants to build a factory so that the small town can expand. This doesn't go over too well with some of the town folk who set out to stop the building, which causes Andy to try and think of what the right thing to do would be. In fairness, the series pretty much ended in 1946 with LOVE LAUGHS AT ANDY HARDY but for some reason MGM thought it might be a good idea to bring this back for a new generation. I honestly don't understand why they brought the series back as it would be clear those teens in the late 50s would have no use for the moral, family loving tradition of Andy Hardy. This film even ends with a "To be Continued...", which of course never happened as this film really didn't do much when released. I must admit that I admire the attempt but in the end the screenplay is just way too weak to work. One problem is that we get three or four flashbacks to previous films and this just makes this film seem lazy. It also doesn't help that the best moments in this film are those flashbacks. Another problem is that the screenplay never really knows what it's trying to do because it wants to show Andy as the father now yet during other scenes they seem to be using him as a joke. We get all sorts of jokes about him being old and his mingling with some teenagers comes off rather silly, if slightly entertaining. We have Rooney returning to his part and we also get Fay Holden as mother, Patricia Breslin as Jane and Sara Haden as Aunt Milly as well as several other small characters. I must admit that I thought all of them struggled with their roles and didn't really recapture the spirit and feeling of the previous films. Some of this might be due to the fact that Lewis Stone passed away five years before this film was made and his talent is certainly missing here. Rooney's real-life son plays his kid here and Johnny Weissmuller, Jr. plays his nephew. There's no question MGM was trying to capture some of their old spirit but this here certainly comes as a failure. Perhaps had they tried something earlier or at least came up with a better screenplay.

score /10

Michael_Elliott 10 May 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2248037/