This is a sequel to Three Smart Girls Grow Up - it was to be called Three Smart Girls Join Up which would have been fun. I know they partnered off two of the girls but they could have made one or two a widow so they could romance. They could have focused the romance on Durbin anyway.
Instead it's just her - her sisters are referred to, we see her parents and the butler, and they watch home movies of footage from the earlier movie. But this isn't good. And they should have made it an original because references to the earlier films just make you realise how better they were and how bad this is.
It starts badly with Joseph Cotten as the leading man - he's charming and all that but he was pushing 40 and Durbin was in her early 20s. I didn't like him pretending to be a doctor to get her address (she should be part of any deception it makes her passive otherwise), and hated that he kissed her without permission and held her hands so she wouldn't slap him. Then he turns up at a dinner ball thing and pretends to be a doctor to non hilarious results and kisses her without permission again.
Durbin is likeable and brisk as always, very pretty, wearing nice gowns. But her spark is less because she's not active. I wonder if Universal kept distracting her with clothes.
The film tries to contrast Durbin's high society world with down to earth Cotten and his mates - but Cotten is a natural aristocrat, that doesn't work, no matter how much gum Cotten chews. But she falls in love.
Around 35 mins in Durbin joins an aircraft factory to be near Cotten. This should have been the start of a movie - or the topic - she shouldn't have joined it for him. She spends most of her work thinking about Cotten and chasing him and it doesn't make sense because she's so sensible.
I wonder if they talked Durbin into this by giving her the prestige of Cotten as a leading man and getting her to play a grown up, who is sexually keen - but it's not fun. Cotten's comic sidekick isn't funny. I didn't like Durbin and Cotten.
There is some interesting vision of work at a munitions factory - this should have been the movie. The girl whose pilot husband dies - that could have been one of the sisters.
What a waste.
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