Young Ideas (1943) - film review

When best-selling author Josephine Evans mysteriously disappears, her agent Adam Trent appeals to her children, Jeff and Susan, to find her and bring her back to New York.   To their horror, the siblings discover that their mother has married Michael Kingsley, the chemistry professor of a small town college.   Deciding that the match is hardly a suitable one – Kingsley is too old and intends to put an end to his wife’s writing career – Jeff and Susan set about wrecking their marriage...

Anyone familiar with the work of filmmaker Jules Dassin will be surprised that, in addition to some stunning examples of film noir - such as The Naked City (1948) and Du rififi chez les hommes (1955) – he also turned his hand to such lowbrow fare as this.  Young Ideas is a predictable, not very cleverly scripted comedy, typical of mid-1940s Hollywood, which fails to match up to the more sophisticated romantic comedies of such masters as Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch.  Whilst the film has a tendency towards silliness, it is mildly entertaining, although such stars as Herbert Marshall and Mary Astor are clearly wasted in this kind of juvenile farce, a forerunner of the family-based TV sitcom.

© James Travers 2008

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