Sexyloutak
Absolutely the worst movie.
BallWubba
Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Robert J. Maxwell
Alas. A great cast, a director who knew about colorful musicals, based on a warm comedy by a Nobel-winning playwright. And it doesn't quite come together.The story resembles Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" a little. It's set in turn-of-the-century New England, and a song by Walter Huston tells us all about how nice it is to live there. In case we had any doubt, it skips from one celebration (a high school graduation) to another (the Fourth of July), each even getting a song of its own.And that's the problem, Conrad Salinger's songs. The lyrics sometimes rhyme in a clever manner but, all in all, they're entirely forgettable. The scenes that were funny in O'Neill's play, "Ah, Wilderness," are still funny here, though. We can watch Mickey Rooney go through his antic experience getting drunk for the first time and kissing a dance hall girl.And the most amusing scene of all, Uncle Sid returning home, drunk, from the picnic is still the most amusing scene in this musical, although Frank Morgan as Uncle Sid isn't as outrageous as Wallace Beery was in an earlier version of the play. Beery sits down to lunch at the family table and begins munching a lobster, shell and all.The story retains is charm. Everybody wants to be Mickey Rooney and Gloria DeHaven, young, beautiful, and virginal. And we want an understanding, common-sense Dad, like Walter Huston. And we all want to change the world. O'Neill must have had a hell of a hard time writing comedy.
edwagreen
Benign musical casting Mickey Rooney and Gloria De Haven as the teenagers next door, in love, but her father is against Rooney for his views. Rooney comes off as a socialist, bookworm in this film.Agnes Moorehead stars as Cousin Lil in this film. She must have been forced under her contract to do this picture. After giving standout Oscar nominating supporting performances in "The Magnificent Ambersons," and "Johnny Belinda," the same year as this clinker, she is totally wasted in a remarkably forgettable part. She even tries to belt out a few bars, but the part was way beneath her talents.I enjoyed Walter Huston's brief singing at the beginning of the film. Selena Royale plays her usual dutiful mother.Frank Morgan, Moorehead's love interest in the film, is his usual lively self. He knows how to touch the bottle, but yet is warm and sincere.
buzz_swanson
"Summer Holiday" is a summer treat that has become an annual ritual at our house. I never fail to slip the video tape into the VCR as May morphs into June and the last days of school are rolling into summer vacation.Mickey Rooney is exuberant as Richard, and Gloria DeHaven is cute and charming as his timorous girlfriend Muriel. Walter Huston is at his reassuring best as Richard's wise and rock-steady father, while Frank Morgan plays the likable, avuncular family drunk who can never quite overcome his dependence on the bottle.The scenery is gorgeous, particularly in the opening scene as protagonists Richard and Muriel sing "Afraid to Fall in Love" to one other then go dancing off into a summery green field together - and also in the celebratory Fourth of July number "Independence Day," shot at the lush Busch Gardens in Pasadena.My one complaint is that the extended barroom scene in which Richard is lured into a night of drunkenness by the temptress bar-girl (Marilyn Maxwell) doesn't seen to match the wholesome tone of the rest of the movie.But it is the Harry Warren/Ralph Bane music that compels me to return for more and more re-viewings. (I must have watched this movie over twenty times since I first spotted it - then taped it - on TNT in the late eighties.) Honestly, I cannot fathom what drives certain reviewers to term the score as "uninspired" or a "dud" except perhaps that they have not listened to the songs enough times or with sufficient earnestness.A disappointing score? Quite the contrary. The Warren/Blane music is extraordinary - even those songs that meddling MGM executives chose to delete from the final version of the film. As it turned out, gorgeous numbers such as "Never Again," in which the rueful but determined Morgan character sadly recounts his battles with alcohol; the exquisitely haunting "Omar and the Princess"; Muriel's lovely confessional, "I Wish I Had a Braver Heart"; and Huston's wistful "Spring Isn't Everything" were inexplicably cut. (One needs to buy the CD soundtrack to hear those and other excised numbers.) Mere disappointment turned into artistic tragedy when a nitrate-vault fire in the mid-fifties destroyed the musical outtakes, rendering impossible any possible restoration of the film to the version envisioned by Warren and Blane. That huge chunks of the score were slashed from the film left Warren so embittered he refused to view the film for over thirty years.Perhaps, the critics should listen to the score a second, third, or fourth time, for a few of the melodies may strike some ears as somewhat subtle and may require repeated hearings. I remember being unimpressed the first time I saw the film and heard the score but have since come to adore the music. I'd categorize the uniquely delightful "Afraid to Fall in Love" as one of the songs that needs to be heard more than once to be fully appreciated.Despite the meat-cleaver cuts, what remains of the score makes for luscious listening. From the brief but tuneful overture while credits are rolling, to the winsome "Our Home Town" - extended opening-scene dialog set to music, to the rousing anthem "Dan-Dan Danville High," to the gloriously catchy "The Stanley Steamer," the music lilts. One of my personal favorites is "While the Men Are All Drinking," a brief number sung by the ladies as they organize their picnic food in the park while their men are off competing in an Independence Day beer-drinking contest and the children are off diving into a nearby pond.To my ears, the music is stunning beautiful and the reason I place "Summer Holiday" in my top ten, all-time-favorite movie list and why I consider Warren one of the top seven or eight composers of popular music that ever lived. He considered this score his best, and I enthusiastically concur.
bkoganbing
Summer Holiday is the forgotten musical version of Eugene O'Neill's Ah Wilderness and deservedly so with the Broadway musical adaptation of Take Me Along. With the exception of the Stanley Steamer song, none of the other Harry Warren-Ralph Blane songs are worth remembering and even that one is questionable. It was right after the release of this film that MGM let Mickey Rooney go and I don't think it was a coincidence. The film was made in 1946 and released in 1948, so Mickey was 26 playing an Andy Hardy like teenager. He was just way too old for the part of the 17 year old who was affecting radical ideas in a spirit of youthful rebellion.Rooney made four films for MGM from 1946 to 1948, this one, Killer McCoy a remake of Robert Taylor's A Crowd Roars, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy and Words and Music. In all of them Rooney was playing an adult part. Even in the Andy Hardy film, Mickey played an adult Andy Hardy returned from World War II. Why he was in this Louis B. Mayer only knows. Rooney's bad casting makes Summer Holiday all the worse because in the original Ah Wilderness the emphasis is on the father's character played here by Walter Huston. And in the Broadway show Take Me Along which won a Tony Award for Jackie Gleason, the Great One played the inebriated brother-in-law Uncle Sid here played by Frank Morgan and that's the central character.Gloria DeHaven steps in for Judy Garland as Rooney's sweet and adorable girl friend and Marilyn Maxwell plays the show girl who gives Rooney an adult education. In the original play O'Neill has her as a prostitute, but this was the Hollywood of the Code so all Marilyn does is get young Rooney soused.A lot of really talented people had a hand in this one and they do their best, but Summer Holiday fades rather quickly into a chilly autumn.
