Review of Maybe It's Love

There is so little actual plot to this movie it would be difficult to write a spoiler if one wanted to. It involves a college president's daughter (Joan Bennett) and her attempts to save her father's job by improving the football team's performance. Using her considerable stock of feminine wiles (she takes off her glasses), she somehow manages to meet and romance every All American football player in the country, and attempts to lure them to Upton University. Yet this movie could have had a lot going for it. I've already mentioned Joan Bennett. Pretty. Even prettier when soaking wet from a canoe accident. She learned to act, but not by the time this film was made. James Hall was the love interest here. You may never have heard of him. His role in this picture may be the reason. Joe E. Brown provides the comedy relief, although his talent seems to be largely wasted, as though the director and writers didn't quite know what to do with him. And yet.... It's worth watching, to see a young Joan Bennett in the early stages of a long and busy career. To see the athleticism in even the most ordinary movements of Joe E. Brown. And to remember and appreciate the names and faces of the 1929 college All Americans who played themselves in this movie, and did it so badly.