Nearly Eighteen

OK: First, it is great to see a comedy from Monogram. Let's hear it for Poverty Row! This particular movie is strangely unappealing. Gale Storm masquerades as a young teenager while she is hanging around with ostensibly comic hoodlums. And she gets her little-girl outfit by stealing it. Is that a model for children to follow? Trust me, I am very far from a prude. But I am a moral person. And this wants to be both adorable and a little spicy. We're supposed to be pulling for her and, I guess, to ignore her dishonesty.

Yes, Ginger Rogers engages in a somewhat similar masquerade in "The Major and The Minor." But that movie is enormously witty and appealing. Are there lecherous overtones? Probably.

But here, Storm goes back and forth, looking only marginally different in each guise, from being a supposed child under 14 and a desirable songstress with curves that show.

Even the title sounds as if it belongs with an X-rated film.

Storm is OK. I have never seen her on TV. From what friends say, I am missing a lot in this. I do wish her show would be run along with seventies sitcoms. She is certainly the best in this. The rest of the performers are wooden and undistinguished.

I didn't intensely dislike it but I couldn't bring myself to like it much, either