Young Jackie Cooper does his shtick that will be familiar to anyone who has seen his Oscar nominated performance in The Champ.He summons up the emotion by grabbing the air with his fists and sobbing loudly,"Aw shucks, aw shucks."
Here Jackie is the younger brother in a family whose parents have divorced and his mother has remarried a well intentioned but rather cold man, who happens to be a doctor and whom everyone refers to as "the doctor" Jackie's teen age brother is well played by Maurice Murphy, whom I never heard of, but impersonates a teen rather well.The movie has plenty of phony bits including an emergency surgery for the teen brother by "the doctor" who also happens to be an expert surgeon. (he makes his considerable diagnosis by a quick wield of his trusty stethoscope) Up to this point in the movie, "the doctor" is sort of the villain. He even whips Jackie when Jackie is being his bratty self. But then "the doctor" performs the emergency surgery and to further canonize him,his blood is "the right kind" for a transfusion and soon enough Jackie realizes that it's okay to have two Pops. It's even better than okay. "It's slicko , " as Jackie says in his early 30's patois.
This is the kind of movie that I would have loved on the old Wonderful World of Disney Show that I watched when I was a kid. As it is, the movie is fast paced and entertaining in a junky way. And Jackie Cooper is fun to watch. So it's worth catching.
Here Jackie is the younger brother in a family whose parents have divorced and his mother has remarried a well intentioned but rather cold man, who happens to be a doctor and whom everyone refers to as "the doctor" Jackie's teen age brother is well played by Maurice Murphy, whom I never heard of, but impersonates a teen rather well.The movie has plenty of phony bits including an emergency surgery for the teen brother by "the doctor" who also happens to be an expert surgeon. (he makes his considerable diagnosis by a quick wield of his trusty stethoscope) Up to this point in the movie, "the doctor" is sort of the villain. He even whips Jackie when Jackie is being his bratty self. But then "the doctor" performs the emergency surgery and to further canonize him,his blood is "the right kind" for a transfusion and soon enough Jackie realizes that it's okay to have two Pops. It's even better than okay. "It's slicko , " as Jackie says in his early 30's patois.
This is the kind of movie that I would have loved on the old Wonderful World of Disney Show that I watched when I was a kid. As it is, the movie is fast paced and entertaining in a junky way. And Jackie Cooper is fun to watch. So it's worth catching.