Uninspired part-remake of "The Male Animal," in loud Technicolor, and its origins aren't the only prefabricated thing about it. Rather than furnish a whole new score, Warners offers three so-so new songs by Vernon Duke and Sammy Cahn and buttresses them with old songs out of its catalog. At least one of these, "Am I in Love," is the basis for a stunning Gene Nelson solo, where he taps, plies, boxes, trampolines, and does who knows what else in one take. Then it's back to the limp plot about Virginia Mayo, formerly Hot Garters Gertie, forsaking burlesque to go to college, where her crush on Professor Ronald Reagan is quickly abandoned because it doesn't fit into the rest of the action. Reagan, never an inspired actor, is embarrassing here, with a long, unfunny drunk scene, and the rest of the cast--Don DeFore, Phyllis Thaxter, Patrice Wymore--isn't what you'd call exciting. It's an awfully white-middle-class college she's working her way through, and H. Bruce Humberstone, responsible for probably more dull Fox musicals than anyone else, does this other studio no favors. There are a couple of good numbers sprinkled throughout, and the script's endorsement of an erstwhile stripper is quite commendable for the puritanical Fifties. But there are dozens of better Warners musicals out there.
