Rating: NR
Genre:
Romance
Release Date: 09/19/2000
SubTitles: English/French
Dubbed: English
Sound: 5.1/1
Run Time: 93 Minutes
Flags: Excellent For Children
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
This second film version of the
DeSylva/
Brown/
Henderson Broadway musical
Good News may not be the best of the
Arthur Freed-produced MGM musicals, but it's certainly one of the peppiest. The film is set at Tait college during the Roaring 20s. The wisp of a plot involves Tait football-star
Peter Lawford, who will be ineligible to play in the Big Game if his grades don't improve.
June Allyson is the demure Tait coed who takes on the task of tutoring Lawford, while campus vamp
Patricia Marshall takes action when she believes (rightly so) that she is losing Lawford to Allyson. The film is deftly stolen by comic relief
Joan McCracken, who stops the show with her energetic rendition of "Pass That Peace Pipe"--which, like the famous Lawford/Allyson duet "The French Lesson," was specially written for this 1948 version of
Good News. Retained from the original score is the rousing "Varsity Drag."
Mel Torme,
Tom Dugan and
Donald McBride are among the familiar supporting-cast faces in this bubbly Technicolor musical, which was adapted for the screen by
Betty Comden and
Adolph Green.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide