Sorry, this movie sucks

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Good concept, poorly executed.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

No need to recap the familiar plot.Thanks to a winning Ginger Rogers, the difficult impersonation of a 12-year old is brought off in charming fashion. Never mind that the actress is actually 30; we're willing to suspend disbelief because of Roger's skill at girlish innocence. The first part is a real hoot, especially with a randy Robert Benchley getting a scrambled egg along with a scalp rub. The train ride too amounts to a sparkly farce as Rogers has to manage sleeping arrangements with Milland in a single compartment. Also, shouldn't overlook Milland's avuncular charm as the good Samaritan "uncle". Any slip on his part with a presumed adolescent and the comedic aspect collapses. But once events reach the military school where Milland instructs, the narrative settles into a more conventional type comedy. It's still amusing but not up to the inspired first part. After all, it's hard to get chuckles from a disciplined cadet corps. I guess my only complaint is that the deliciously droll Benchley doesn't get more screen time. Just his presence is enough to get me chuckling.Anyway, it's tricky subject matter that could have spoiled at many points. Fortunately, Wilder and company manage to keep the amusement rolling in tasteful fashion despite the risks. All in all, the Paramount production amounts to one of the better comedies of the period.

The Major and the Minor is the film that me fall in love with Ginger Rogers, turning me into the obsessive fan I am now. Miss Rogers is Susan "Susu" Applegate, who transforms her 30 year old body into that of a 12 year old and does so completely convincingly and in my view gives the finest performance of her career. I question how many actresses would have the ability to do such a feat. Being a super fan I would say that she should have won an Oscar for this acting marvel but I doubt the Academy would pay much attention to a weird little irrational comedy like this. Oh yes, weird, that is our key word here. If the premise of a 30 year old disguise as a 12 year old in order to get half fare on a train ticket doesn't have you raising an eyebrow then how about throwing her into a military academy with 300 male pre teen cadets. The whole family can enjoy The Major and the Minor, the kids can enjoy the smart alecky humor and the adults can enjoy the sexual innuendo....centered around children. That's one of the things that makes this movie great, it's so wrong on many levels (yet feels so right, or something like that) but contains that kind of innocence and naivety that only classic Hollywood can pull off. The British Board of Film Classification gives the film a current rating of "U" with the description, "contains very mild sex references", although I believe that's a gross understatement. Imagine if Lolita was a screwball comedy, you would have a result somewhere along the lines of The Major and the Minor.Ray Milland is an excellent leading man, well a leading man to a character whom he thinks is a child (yes this movie becomes more wrong the further I analyse it). I wonder how must have felt delivering such lines as "You like boys Susu?, 300 of them, all they're all yours". The ending of The Major and the Minor itself is disturbing on a number of levels. When Major Kirby discovers Susu is actually an adult and they presumably now fall in love as seen in the final scene, is he going to fantasize that he's going out with the 12 year old Susu? My other favourite cast member here is Diana Lynn as an intellectual child planning to become a scientist. This kid is so bad ass, I'm actually quote jealous of her. Normally kids in movies tend to get on my nerves, but not when they're able to outwit the adults, as seen here.The Major and the Minor was Billy Wilder's American directorial debut and already he has made the first in a long line of masterpieces. Exploring his films (including those he has written) I feel has been a journey for me through the annals of classic Hollywood and for helping to shape my sense of humour. The Major and the Minor marks another milestone in that journey.

Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers of "Top Hat") has had enough of New York. She tried a little of everything, even massaging scalps. An older man, Mr. Osburne (Robert Benchley) tried to get her to have a drink with him so she cracked an egg on his noggin and left in a hurry. Unfortunately, luck eluded her in the Big Apple. Finally, she decides to return to her hometown of Stevenson, Iowa. She has been saving ticket fare for the trip. Indeed, she has kept $27.5o, and she aims to use it for her fare back. Imagine Susan's surprise when the railway clerk informs her that the fare has gone up. Now, she has to fork over $32.50, but she doesn't have it. Stepping aside to let a mother with her daughter and son purchase tickets, Susan feels beaten down by this setback. She gets an idea when the mother buys tickets for her children. As it turns out, children ride for half-price. Susan changes her apparel and hair to more closely resemble a child. She enlists the aid of a shifty, but respectable looking gentleman. He is checking the phone coin returns for spare change. She persuades him to buy her a ticket. Shrewdly, the panhandler keeps the change and puts Susan aboard her train. Although she has gotten aboard the train posing as a child, the suspicious conductors are not entirely taken in by Susan's subterfuge as a twelve-year old. They make her stand up for inspection. Miraculously, she makes a narrow escape, but she is living on borrowed time. Eventually, they catch Susan on the rear observation platform smoking a cigarette. Susan manages to tuck the cigarette into her mouth before they can catch her. They interrogate our heroine, but she says nothing until she cannot withstand the smoke backed up in her mouth. She blows smoke, conceals the butt in a napkin, slings the napkin aside and scrambles out of their reach. They pursue her through the train and she gives the two conductors the slip when she enters a sleeping berth. Little does she know she has entered the cabin of Major Kirby (Ray Milland of "The Lost Weekend") and he allows her to remain in his compartment. Of course, Kirby doesn't realize that Susan is masquerading as an adolescent. He falls hook, line, and sinker for her act, and later all the cadets at the Wallace Military Institute where he returning are captivated by Susan. Initially, however, Kirby's fiancée believes that he entertained a woman in his compartment. Naturally, everybody is considerably relieved when they learn Susan is only twelve.Major Kirby, it seems, has been trying to get into the armed forces before war breaks out, but his fiancée, Pamela Hill (Rita Johnson of "Broadway Serenade") wants to keep him safe at home for herself. Pamela invites Susan—she is called Su-Su by everybody—to share a room with younger sister, Lucy Hill (Diana Lynn of "The Kentuckian"), who hates her older sister. No sooner have Lucy and Susan met than Lucy sees through Susan's disguise. Such is her animosity toward her sister that she refuses to divulge Susan's secret and they become closely-knit gals. Kirby presents the cadets to Su-Su and they flock to her. These uniformed brats are beside themselves with her. Each has the same line when it comes to necking and kissing her. They explain the strategy the Nazis used when they refused to attack the Maginot Line with their infamous blitzkrieg and brought about the collapse of France. Before long Susan is realizes that she has gotten herself into something bigger than she imagined. She also comes to detest Pamela and does everything she can to help Kirby get into the war. One amusing scene occurs at the institute's telephone switchboard. Finally, Pamela catches on and threatens to expose Susan if she doesn't leave the school. Susan caves in and lets Pamela win. She returns home to Stevenson to live with her mother. In this case, Ginger Rogers' real-life mother Lela Rogers plays her mom. When she least expects it, Major Kirby calls her up and reveals that he is passing through Stevenson on his way to the West Coast. He wants to come out and visit Su-Su. When he arrives as Mrs. Applegate's home, Kirby is sad that he doesn't get to see Su-Su. Susan learns that Kirby didn't marry Pamela. Pamela married a cadet who is the son of a wealthy man. Kirby leaves without realizing the stunt that Susan has played on him. While he is waiting for the train to arrive at the depot, Kirby spots a hot dish at the other end of the platform. Of course, it turns out to be Susan. We fade out to happily ever after as the couple are heading for Nevada to get married.Writer & director Billy Wilder of "Some Like It Hot" made his Hollywood debut as a helmer on this polished comedy. Charles Brackett co-wrote the screenplay, and Wilder and Brackett shared screen credit as the scribes on a number of Hollywood classics, such as "Ninotchka," "Ball of Fire," "Five Graves to Cairo," "The Lost Weekend," and "Sunset Boulevard." The dialogue is swift and snappy and often conceals multiple meanings. The idea that a fully grown woman would deceive people into believing she is twelve years old must have seem rather risqué back in those days when the Hollywood censorship office, the Production Code Administration, was charged with protecting the morals of middle-age America from profligate filmmakers. Today, "The Major and the Minor" seems hopelessly innocent. Wilder makes certain that the action advances at a breezy pace with both Ray Milland and Ginger Rogers generating a little charisma along the way.

Ginger Rogers pretends to be twelve-year-old Susu in order to save on train fair during the war. She's bunked in a compartment with Major Kirby, Ray Milland, who doesn't see through her disguise. He grows fond of her nonetheless and they stop off at a military academy for teen-aged boys where Milland is stationed for the moment. All the horny boys, thinking Rogers is their age, put moves on her. But she is finally undone when she runs into Robert Benchley, who remembers her from a hair salon or something. She escapes, her adult identity intact, and goes to her rural home. Still believing that Susu is only twelve, Milland visits her home and talks to Rogers, now disguised as her own mother. When she discovers that Milland hasn't gone through with a marriage he'd planned, she reveals herself, he twigs to everything, they clinch at the railroad station, cue the swelling romantic waltz, fade out.In its own bland way it's kind of funny -- dated, to be sure, but it has its amusing moments. (A cadet who has deserted his post for a date bops his way backwards into a room, only to find it filled with outraged superiors.) All those squeaky-voiced cadets illustrating the Blitzkrieg by insinuating their arms around Rogers. The teen-aged Diana Lynn who immediately sees through Rogers but becomes buddies with her and clams up.But it's mostly pretty tepid stuff by today's standards. There are smile-inducing awkward situations but not many tag lines or outrageous gags. Not many gags at all. Fred Astaire, it's been said, gave Ginger Rogers class and she gave him sex. It's true enough. But by the time this film appeared Rogers could no longer pass for twelve years old. She looked thirtyish, which she was. That's not a criticism of Rogers herself or of her performance. Nobody looks young forever except me.But think of how much more involving the movie would have been if there HAD been some succulent Hollywood dish who looked fundamentally mature but was actress enough to pull off the role of a young teen and who could LOOK it too. Only Ellen Page comes to mind but there must be others.And I suppose one couldn't expect too much in the way of outrageous humor, which would seem built into the script itself. The movie code and the contemporary audience might applaud multiple deaths and a panorama of pain on the screen but let us never see a grown man glance at a twelve-year-old knee.Billy Wilder, who co-wrote it with Charles Brackett, was given the directorial duties. He'd do much better with a latent status movie -- based on sex rather than age -- a little less than twenty years later with the superb "Some Like It Hot."