Bring Them Young
Married Too Young (1962): 4 out of 10: Tommy Blaine (Harold Lloyd Jr.) and Helen Newton (Jana Lund) are two young teenagers who are very horny… I mean um…deeply in love. Eager to escape their restrictive home lives and the disapproval of Helen’s strict parents, they impulsively decide to get married. However, since they are “underage”, they are unable to legally wed without parental consent. A quick trip across state lines and one shady justice of the peace later and they are legally married.
Tommy finds it difficult to support them on his low-paying job (As race car driver/mechanic), and their romantic dream soon turns into a harsh reality filled with stress and frustration and a lot of whining from Tommy. Tommy then decides to pay for the rental furniture with a job for the mob, and things go from bad to worse.
The script for Married to Young is often credited to Ed Wood Jr. which has given the film some notoriety over the years. The screenplay was actually written by Nat Tanchuck. However, Ed Wood reportedly contributed to the production, possibly as an uncredited script doctor or in another behind-the-scenes capacity.
It does not say much for your screenplay when people’s first thought is Did Ed Wood Jr. write this?
The Good
The Good: Well, the female leads (Jana Lund and Marianna Hill) are attractive and the greasy mob guy Anthony Dexter nails his role with some superb suits and hair.
The pacing of Married Too Young is pretty good as well, which is one clue that it is not an Ed Wood Jr. picture.
The Bad
The Bad: You know if you are going to do a film whose premise is two kids getting married too young it would be helpful if the actors involved weren’t clearly in thier very late twenties (Lund) or early thirties (Harold Lloyd Jr.).
I also would have had a lot better attendance at High School if sexpot Marianna Hill was a “student” there.
Outside of winning a car race at the beginning of the movie, I have no idea what Jana Lund sees in Harold Lloyd Jr. He is whiny, quick to anger and pretty dim. Not exactly the best looking catch either. Seriously, how horny is she?
The Ugly
The Ugly: Married Too Young has one of those moralistic endings where the judge admonishes the parents. I think the parents were fine. The kids are idiot brats. I am still unclear how Jana Lund and Harold Lloyd Jr. were resurrected for that scene after clearly being killed off. Perhaps I missed something.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: There is a RiffTrax version I review below which is the recommended way to watch the film. Married Too Young is a curious slice of artificial history. There is a lot (and I mean a lot) of outdated slang in the movie which can be entertaining. It is as if the entire cast is trying to make “Fetch” happen.
RiffTrax Version
RiffTrax Version: 7 out of 10: The always delightful Bridget Jones and Mary Jo Pehl take on this tale of “youth” gone wild. This is not the film I would use to introduce the ladies to a new audience. They have had better work. That said, there are some real gems here.
One aside, as I mention above, this has been proven not to be an Ed Wood joint. Alas, the ladies are all in on the Ed Wood comments. Not since Space Mutiny was falsely blamed on Canada has there been such a travesty of justice.
The observations the ladies make are spot on. Let me highlight two things that bothered me as much as the ladies. One is that after Jana Lund and Harold Lloyd Jr. cross state lines to get married, they seem to be in no hurry to have sex. They just go off to the malt shop, where they stiff the owner for a buck and a quarter. Perhaps Jana Luna talked to Bing Crosby.*
The other observation is when the “kids” finally get a place on thier own it appears to be a modern giant house with all the latest furniture. Seriously, it looks like a lounge out of the offices of Mad Men when they opened thier own agency. The girls wryly assume that perhaps the rental payments for the modern art pieces are what finally drove them to desperation.
Overall, a fun and pleasant outing from Bridget and Mary Jo and certainly the best way to watch to movie…. oh and as for that Bing Crosy asterisk above from Wikipedia, the following to ponder. “In 1960, he (Harold Lloyd Jr.) was again engaged, this time to Parisian socialite Irene Barrelet de Ricou, daughter of French tennis player Paul Barrelet de Ricou and socialite Louise Barrelet de Ricou. Irene was warned by many, including Bing Crosby, not to marry Lloyd, but it was not until she caught him with another man that the wedding was canceled.”
