Just perfect...

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

his Andy Hardy installment finds Andy graduated from high school and trying to decide what to do next. Judge Hardy wants him to go to college and then law school whereas Andy wants to go off to the big city for a month and see what life would be like working and paying his own way. Andy agrees to try this for a month and then reassess what to do next. Unfortunately for Andy, this is the tail end of the Depression and finding a job is not easy. But through it all, Andy refuses to ask his family for help and struggles to make his own way. I would say this might just be the darkest of all the movies in the series, as it's not nearly as light-hearted as usual and, at times, is super-morbid...such as when one of Andy's friends is found dead!! But I appreciate the film because the usually feather-weight series takes a more dramatic and realistic turn. Well worth seeing.By the way, this film marks the third and final time Judy Garland appeared in the series and Betsy just disappears after this one.

There's some bite in this eleventh installment of the Hardy series. Unfortunately, there's also a forced retreat from any kind of controversial follow-through. In the end, the tried and true verities of small town America are once again affirmed, but then that is exactly what audiences expected from this pre-war version of Ozzie and Harriet.What makes this entry more interesting is a dark side not usually seen in Andy's world of proms and parental wisdom. Vaguely bored with the prospect of a settled life, Andy leaves Carver to prove himself amid the challenges of the big city, New York. There he finds a more impersonal and risky life-style, but also glamor and excitement. However, his small town openness and honesty are quickly exploited by a gold-digging glamor girl, Patricia Dane in an excellent performance. At the same time, his in-bred good-neighborliness prompts him to risk eviction by sneaking a penniless youth, Frobisher (Mc Donald), into his hotel room.Unfortunately Frobisher turns up dead in Andy's bathroom, a startling development for such a sunny series. At first, the death looks like a suicide, the boy being penniless with no prospects. It also looks like a hard dose of reality for Andy. More importantly, suicide presents a never-thought-of possibility for Andy too, since he's been struggling in a tight job market. Suicide would have added real weight to the story. However, the script is forced to revert to comfortable series form when it's discovered the boy died of natural causes. Thus a potentially exceptional entry is turned into another series programmer. Apparently it was the Catholic legion of Decency that forced this emasculating change on the studio. What an excellent example of how the dead hand of censorship sanitized reality in the name of protecting the audience from that same reality. And, if memory serves, it wasn't until 1956 (Elia Kazan's Baby Doll) that a studio product was willing to defy the self-appointed censors and treat adults like adults.Of course, in this movie, there's the usual lively, engaging turns from Rooney and Garland, along with MGM's customarily slick production values. Dad Hardy (Stone) works in his usual words of wisdom, this time on the virtues of unmarried abstinence of the unfortunate myopic type that ten years later would help fuel the Playboy, Hugh Hefner revolt. All in all, the series may have idealized a small town America that never was. But it also presented a picture of life as many wanted it to be and still do.

Following his graduation from high school, a small-town teenager decides to try his luck learning about life and making it on his own in New York City. Where he encounters the death of a disillusioned, penniless young friend and the seductive wiles of a glamorous "older woman" he encounters at his office job. Not to mention the wrath of the censors (who forced the studio the change the cause of death from a suicide to a heart attack) as well as the Catholic church (whose Legion of Decency damned the film with an "objectionable for children" rating). Hard to believe that an episode in the ebullient Andy Hardy series caused such controversy, but it is this film's commendable attempt to portray the dilemmas of youth with honesty and candor (incredible for 1941) that make it the most durable and disarming entry of the entire series. As contemporary today as it was 60 years ago, "Life Begins for Andy Hardy" is blessed with, besides a refreshingly adult screenplay that evokes emotions unchanged by the passage of time, astoundingly "mature" performances by Mickey Rooney (for once underplaying) and Judy Garland (displaying a sincerity and warmth without ever singing a note).Rooney's portrayal of a good-hearted teenager who decent instincts hardly prepare him for the brutal reality of survival in the "Big City" will strike resonant chords with anyone in a similar situation 60 years later. And, in addition to Rooney and Ms. Garland, sterling performances are contributed by the Hardy regulars (Lewis Stone, never more sage or heartrending as Andy's concerned father); the lovely Patricia Dane, as Andy's office co-worker and would-be seducer; and Ray McDonald, heartbreaking as a penniless aspiring actor reduced to living (and starving) in Central Park. A tacked-on happy ending and jarring lapses in continuity (indicating heavy studio re-cutting and re-shooting) fail to undermine the sweet sadness of this most unusual MGM drama--flirting with themes that would be dealt with far more candidly and cruelly some 20 years later in such innocents-lost-in-the-city classics as "The Rat Race" and "Breakfast at Tiffanys," of which "Life Begins for Andy Hardy" is a most poignant pre-cursor.

This movie is worth seeing just for the advice Judge Hardy gives Andy. He explains beautifully why every unmarried person should be faithful to his or her future spouse, even before they ever meet each other.It is interesting that the Legion of Decency objected to this speech. In 1941 such parental advice was so well known that it was not helpful to hear it in a movie, and it was dangerous to display sexual advice in the public setting of a movie. Keep in mind that the speech is so tasteful that we would not even call it sexual at all. Yet to them it was good, sound advice but far too personal to publicize.In our time we have fallen so far from those wholesome principles that it would be very helpful to publicize them broadly. I am seeking a copy of this movie to show to my children and friends.