Highly Overrated But Still Good

Better Late Then Never

Best movie ever!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Producer: Alex Gottlieb. Copyright 2 September 1944 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. A Warner Bros.-First National picture. New York opening at the Strand: 4 August 1944. U.S. release: 25 July 1944. U.K. release: 22 February 1945. Australian release: 28 February 1946. Running times: 106 minutes (US); 95 minutes (Aust).NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Henry Miller on 10 September 1942 and ran a remarkable 642 performances. Gwen Anderson, Howard St John and Linda Watkins starred. Antoinette Perry directed. Incredibly, Owen Marks was nominated for an Oscar for Best Film Editing, losing to Barbara McLean's Wilson. Sequel: Janie Gets Married.COMMENT: Janie is every bit as bad as the players, synopsis of the story and a contemporary New York Times review by Bosley Crowther led us to expect. Its only redeeming promise lay in the movie credits, but regrettably these gentlemen all let us down. The film is very sloppily and often atrociously edited and Mike Curtiz lets his players run riot. Admittedly the script is very weak, but no amount of excess fulminating by Ed Arnold could improve it. Miss Reynolds makes Janie a precocious twit and Robert Hutton is a dill. Richard Erdman does what he can with the painfully ridiculous role of Scooper. Robert Benchley glides through the motions of his role with customary hand-out-for-his-weekly-pay-check aplomb. As far as production values are concerned, it's little more than a photographed stage play with a few crowd scenes thrown in.

According to TCM, "Janie" was made by Warner Brothers to try to cash in on the success of MGM's Andy Hardy series. Like the Hardy films, "Janie" features a goofy teenager, a well respected father who is often flummoxed, a mother, a sister and a housekeeper....though the father here, Charles Conway (Edward Arnold) seemed a bit more flummoxed as "Janie" seems a bit more likely to make it to second base than Andy.Joyce Reynolds stars as the title character. She only made about a dozen films, so it's safe to say that the series never caught on. In fact, they only made one other film in the series...but with Joan Leslie playing the character. The film's main plot involves Janie's two romances--with her classmate, 'Scooper' as well as a soldier waiting to be shipped out, Dick. To me, "Janie" is only a bit like the Hardy films. Yes, the family constellation is similar but much more shrill and chaotic...sort of like if the Hardys were all crack addicts!! So, the emphasis is less on charm and more on barraging the audience with crazy antics. I am not saying it's necessarily bad...but it's not the Hardys. Some of this is due to the super-bratty little sister...a plot device that wears thin after a while. The sing-a-long in the second half of the film is also problematic--making it seem more like an overtly patriotic film instead of the subtle Harady-style film. And, unlike Andy, you can imagine Janie making it way past first or second base--especially with all those lusty soldiers hanging about during the party sequence! Overall, the film is a moderately enjoyable time passer and nothing more.

Joyce Reynolds seems a might grown-up for the role of Janie, a boy-crazy sixteen-year old in small town America who ditches her steady guy for a visiting soldier AND winds up on the cover of Life magazine (smooching at a blanket party) all in the same week! Non-stop barrage of wisecracks, put-downs, bull talk, and unfunny bits of business such as Janie's little sister bribing family members, Hattie McDaniel (as the maid) constantly scuttling after sassy kid sis, Janie's mother involved with the Red Cross, and Janie's father trying to write an editorial on the problems with today's teenagers (as the parents, stuffy, sexless Edward Arnold and pert, chatty Ann Harding make an unlikely couple, even for 1944; he looks incapable of helping to conceive a child much less raising two of them). Nominated for an Academy Award (!) for Owen Marks' editing, Warner Bros. followed this in 1946 with "Janie Gets Married". Reynolds must have outgrown her co-horts by then--she was replaced by Joan Leslie. *1/2 from ****

I usually find movies of this era a little too slow or dull, this one kept me. It was humorous and well paced, nostalgic. Nothing too serious, but not too goofy either. Of course the girls were all immaculately dressed and the costumes and scripting for phrases was excellent. The premise was the same as what they use to build sitcoms today, Small town girl has beau that she has grown up with, romantic older fellow in uniform sweeps her off her feet, girl is torn between childhood ties and grownup romance...girl plans small affair while her parents are out, huge crowd shows up, party ensues and is broken up by the police and all of the characters still love each other in the end; all of the little side plots are happily resolved and that's the end. Good family film. (doesn't Janie look remarkably like Geena Davis?!?)