If you're looking for something with depth and layers of meaning, pass this one by, please! Start Cheering was designed to be completely preposterous screwball comedy, and it achieves that in spades.
Jimmy Durante plays the scheming, greedy Hollywood agent who sees his bread and butter disappearing to a T. Fast talking, always angling and in hot pursuit of his screen idol turned student, he collaborates with a very young Broderick Crawford, who plays the captain of the football team, to get Ted Crosley (Charles Starrett) expelled. The dean, however, loves the extra money flowing into the university, and begins not just to bend the rules, he turns them completely upside-down to keep Crosley at the school. Of course, there is a love interest who in the end, fixes everything so everybody is happy.
The film is kid- and grandma-friendly, with no overtly vulgar language or scenes (altho' the drunken co-ed party in Crosley's dorm room suggests - a drunken co-ed party in a college dorm!) And anyone who still receives notes from the Alumni Group at their former college 50 years after they've graduated understands the money driven Dean, as this is still the norm for universities. The car vs. Pullman train chase scene is classic, and slapstick comedy is in abundance. I admit not just to an occasional giggle, but to laughing out loud with this one.
It's just over an hour long, so watching it is a quick, guilty pleasure that can easily break up a long stretch of reality. Enjoy it for what it is!
Jimmy Durante plays the scheming, greedy Hollywood agent who sees his bread and butter disappearing to a T. Fast talking, always angling and in hot pursuit of his screen idol turned student, he collaborates with a very young Broderick Crawford, who plays the captain of the football team, to get Ted Crosley (Charles Starrett) expelled. The dean, however, loves the extra money flowing into the university, and begins not just to bend the rules, he turns them completely upside-down to keep Crosley at the school. Of course, there is a love interest who in the end, fixes everything so everybody is happy.
The film is kid- and grandma-friendly, with no overtly vulgar language or scenes (altho' the drunken co-ed party in Crosley's dorm room suggests - a drunken co-ed party in a college dorm!) And anyone who still receives notes from the Alumni Group at their former college 50 years after they've graduated understands the money driven Dean, as this is still the norm for universities. The car vs. Pullman train chase scene is classic, and slapstick comedy is in abundance. I admit not just to an occasional giggle, but to laughing out loud with this one.
It's just over an hour long, so watching it is a quick, guilty pleasure that can easily break up a long stretch of reality. Enjoy it for what it is!