"Summer Holiday" is old-fashioned in the worst sense of the phrase. O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!!" is bland-ed out by the MGM factory into 'homespun' niceties with no edge and no basis in reality. The acting is exaggerated in the extreme, with everyone overreacting to everyone and indicating their characters with sledgehammer finesse. Rooney, often a very fine performer, is at his overacting worst here, far too old to play a teenager and trying far to hard to be an innocent. It's totally unbelievable. The songs are instantly forgettable and the direction is downright weird at times. There's a reason that this film sat on the studio shelf for two years, flopped upon release and ended Rooney's career at MGM. It's awful.
Review of Summer Holiday
