Review of Freckles Comes Home

When you see Bradley Page's name in the credits, you know that the suave, tough-talking city slicker is out to defraud some seemingly simple folk, and here, it's an entire small town where the population reaches a new high of 502 when Page and his bank-robbing crony relocate there in order to hoodwink out the simpletons out of their money while pretending to help them finance a new road to go through the town in hopes of increasing its population and give it a bigger dot on the map. Here, Johnny Downs and Gale Storm (later of "My Little Margie" fame) are the young romantic leads who seem as naive as the typical hickster who moves to the big city, yet have enough sense beneath their seemingly naive natures. Funny black character actor Mantan Moreland once again goes up against Laurence Criner (as he had done in the earlier "The Gangs All Here") pitting the small-town dim-witted African American against the African American big city henchman of the villain. Their comedy is stereotypical but on occasion funny, especially when they gamble over who will get the comfortable bed Moreland usually sleeps in and who will end up on the hard-as-iron floor. A few minor songs interrupt the hokey comedy but the result is still innocuous fun.