Hold That Co-ed

A wooly-headed governor lifts his sad-sack state school's football team into the front rank in order to boost his sagging senatorial campaign.

The movie bears more than a passing resemblance to 1936's Pigskin Parade, a much better movie. How you respond to this particular parody likely depends on Barrymore's wacko performance. I'm a minority, but I found his relentless eye-rolling spastic moves off-putting rather than funny. I thought great actors calibrated their performances. Here, his turn as the governor is anything but calibrated. It's like he doesn't want to steal every scene; instead, he wants to stomp on it. Too bad, because the antics detract from Joan Davis's genuinely humorous brand of comedy and Murphy's likable if sober-sided coach. In fact, I thought the highpoint of the cinematic stew-pot was Murphy's charming little soft-shoe shuffle near the beginning. Anyway, in my book, the film's for hardcore Barrymore fans only.