From my favorite movies..

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Fifteen years earlier Ida Lupino might have made a challenging film about the abuse of foundlings by an institution, and she later gave a terrifying performance as a brutal prison matron in a TV movie called 'Women in Chains (1972); but this (the only colour film she directed), feels more like a continuation of Hayley Mills' time at Disney, and looks as if it was made for television.St. Francis Academy seems more like a finishing school for young ladies than a religious institution; and there's a remarkable absence of God talk (there'd be plenty if it was remade today)! We're told what a tyrant Mother Superior Rosalind Russell is without being shown much evidence of this, and how naughty Mills is, while they trade abuse with Russell claiming Mills belongs in San Quentin, but usually with a twinkle in her eye and a smile playing about her lips; and she never settles arguments in the traditional manner by beating her. Russell also seems to have plenty of time away from her desk free of the burden of administrative duties, instead constantly popping up Miss Danvers style to interrupt Hayley's mischievous little schemes before they can usually fully take wing. It would have been interesting to see Lupino take Russell's part.

This film has been a favorite of mine for nearly 45 years now and I have seen it countless times. The comedy is gentle - not laugh-out-load - and the quieter moments are full of grace. As a matter of fact, the comedy actually supports and enhances the drama, and it is these moments in which the film really shines. The casting is perfect - Rosalind Russell makes for a very believable Mother Superior, a woman who is not without her faults but who is filled with humanity and patience. Haley Mills as Mary Clancy and June Harding as Rachel Devery make a terrific duo as mischievous students. In particular, Mary's growth and transition throughout the film are filled with wonderful details for those with an eye for such things. The supporting cast is terrific as well with Marge Redmond a standout as Sister Liguori, a close friend and confidant of Mother Superior, and the ever reliable Mary Wickes as Sister Clarissa, whistle and all. The direction by the great Ida Lupino is assured and understated and the memorable score by the great Jerry Goldsmith is full of warmth and charm. Each time I view this film, it is like visiting an old and dear friend. The visit is filled with humor, pathos and bittersweet moments, much like life itself.

Mother Superior Rosalind Russell has her hands full with two brats at Catholic boarding school. I wanted to like this more than I did. Russell is good as are the other adults. But the kids just irked me. Hayley Mills in particular was very annoying. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for her bratty behavior. She was like a female Dennis the Menace. She just kept getting into trouble. For some reason there's little time spent on story here. It's like a series of vignettes instead of a cohesive plot as the movie goes from one incident after another with little room to breathe. The comedy is all very broad and seems to rely upon you enjoying the hijinks of Mills and her sidekick (June Harding). Since I didn't enjoy their antics it left me with very little to laugh at. The last half of the movie is a little better as there are more serious and touching moments. However the ending felt pretty contrived. Obviously this is a sentimental and nostalgic favorite for many. I can sympathize with that. I wish I liked it more. But I found it ultimately disappointing.

During the first half of the sixties Hayley Mills was perhaps the most successful teenage actress in Hollywood, appearing in a series of family comedies for Walt Disney. "The Trouble with Angels" was the first movie she made after her contract with Disney came to an end in 1965, and although Hayley was now twenty years old she was still cast as a teenage schoolgirl. The film is set in an all-girls Catholic boarding school run by an order of nuns. Hayley plays the rebellious Mary Clancy who with her best friend Rachel Devery gets into all sorts of scrapes and becomes the bane of the Mother Superior's life. Although Hayley's own schooldays were now at an end, she was still young enough to be convincing as a teenager. Not so June Harding, who plays Rachel and was actually twenty-six at the time, three years older than Camilla Sparv, who plays one of the nuns, Sister Constance. Unlike Mills, who is her usual irrepressible self, Harding gives a wooden performance.Although the movie was made in the sixties, the heyday of protest and youthful rebellion, the misdemeanours of the two girls are very minor-league stuff. The general atmosphere is similar to that of those old boarding school novels from the thirties by the likes of Enid Blyton and Angela Brazil; all that is missing is a midnight feast with lashings of ginger beer. I kept hoping that Mary and Rachel would do something really daring, like taking drugs, sneaking boys back into their dormitory, going on a protest march calling for the Pill to be distributed free, having a lesbian affair or spiking the nuns' coffee with LSD, but their minor acts of rebellion never get much further than bilking off swimming lessons by feigning illness or sneaking off for a quick cigarette. The scene in which Mary substitutes soap powder for the nuns' sugar is about as much fun as it gets. Hayley Mills obviously wanted to keep her clean-cut image intact, although that image was to be damaged in her next film, "Sky West and Crooked", in which she plays a simple-minded girl who gets involved with an older man, and to be blown out of the water in the film after that, "The Family Way", in which she appeared nude.For most of its length "The Trouble with Angels" is a rather dull comedy about naughty schoolgirls, but it tries to become more serious at the end when Mary, rather improbably, decides that she too will become a nun. Mary seems to have been impressed by Sister Constance who is leaving the school to teach in a leper colony in the Philippines, and by the Mother Superior's own life history- she gave up a successful career as a fashion designer to become a nun- but there has been little in what has gone before to suggest that Mary might have a religious vocation, and this ending comes as something of a surprise. If the film-makers had wanted to make a film about a girl who becomes a nun- a sort of junior version of "The Nun's Story"- they would have done better to concentrate more on her spiritual development from the start. As it is, I was left with the impression that they simply tacked this unlikely ending onto this feeble comedy just to reassure Catholic cinema-goers that their faith was not being lampooned. 4/10