Love may have found Andy Hardy, but for teenager Judy Bellaire (Judy Garland), it's a thin line between love and hate for her selfish family. Expelled from private boarding school (for turning her music class into a swing session), Judy comes home to find her family uninterested in her problems. Fluttery mom Billie Burke is too busy in hamming it up with the reading of a play with Reginald Gardiner; Papa Reginald Owen, not quite the Wizard of Wall Street, is barking at everybody after bad business deals which left them broke, and sister Lynne Carver is in love with the singing cook (Allan Jones). Garland only wants to help the family and a singing gig at the nightclub where Jones performs on the side leads her to want to pursue a career in the musical theater. She fools her family into thinking she's going to Europe on a school trip and gets into a Broadway show produced by Jones' employer (Henry Armetta), determined to be "Little Miss Fix It" to save a family others would be dying to get out of.
Even with Jones and Fanny Brice (as the wise-cracking maid) top-billed, it's Garland's show all the way, swingin' out five songs and stealing her way into your heart, even if the movie surrounding her isn't one of her earlier best. Some of Brice's material comes off dated and does not reflect what Streisand would do as her in "Funny Girl" and "Funny Lady". Garland does a cute but semi-tacky black face number (to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" no less) and plays Little Lord Fauntleroy to Brice's Baby Snooks in the cute "Why? Because?" musical skit that is one of the highlights of the film. Poor Garland couldn't escape from MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer's description of her as his "little hunchback", being referred to by her character's mother Burke as "my poor ugly duckling".
A nice surprise is the appearance of Monty Woolley literally playing "The Man Who Came to Dinner", actually the producer of a play that Burke longs to star in that gets a dinner invitation to share a squab which never arrives. As a result of all the noise, an irresponsible set of parents and a plot best described as not of this Broadway world, this film is only average, filled with some great moments, but an over-stuffed finale where an already wacky family goes even more batty.
Even with Jones and Fanny Brice (as the wise-cracking maid) top-billed, it's Garland's show all the way, swingin' out five songs and stealing her way into your heart, even if the movie surrounding her isn't one of her earlier best. Some of Brice's material comes off dated and does not reflect what Streisand would do as her in "Funny Girl" and "Funny Lady". Garland does a cute but semi-tacky black face number (to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" no less) and plays Little Lord Fauntleroy to Brice's Baby Snooks in the cute "Why? Because?" musical skit that is one of the highlights of the film. Poor Garland couldn't escape from MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer's description of her as his "little hunchback", being referred to by her character's mother Burke as "my poor ugly duckling".
A nice surprise is the appearance of Monty Woolley literally playing "The Man Who Came to Dinner", actually the producer of a play that Burke longs to star in that gets a dinner invitation to share a squab which never arrives. As a result of all the noise, an irresponsible set of parents and a plot best described as not of this Broadway world, this film is only average, filled with some great moments, but an over-stuffed finale where an already wacky family goes even more batty.