After two movies that covered a busy summer for Andy between high school graduation and going off to college, he finally does go in this, the 14th of the 16 movies made in the series-counting the 1958 finale, made 12 years after the 15th movie that really should count as the last in the series, made from 1937-46.

Either way it's a mix of the usual comic antics of Mickey Rooney and drama about the troubles of beginning college.

I call this one "That Hardy Boy Meets Nancy Drew" because the phrase "that Hardy Boy" was used in this film and the female co-star was Bonita Granville, who starred in four reasonably-entertaining comedy-dramas in the 1930s as that famous teen detective Nancy Drew. The only connection between the other famous detectives written by the same syndicate that wrote the Nancy Drew series and this film is the shared last name of "Hardy."

And one of the other key players in this film is the most-famous son of movieland's famous detective of this whole Andy Hardy era-Key Luke, who played a doctor from Brooklyn here, after years of playing Charlie Chan's Number One son Lee. Maybe they should have made this some sort of detective story?

The previous film-released two years earlier, Andy Hardy's Double Life, ended with him boarding the train for Wainwright College. Almost as soon as he gets on board, he spots a pretty female and learns from her that his new home is accepting coeds for the first time this fall, and she is one of them.

They re-filmed that scene here. Andy is wearing a totally different tie-a wild pattern contrasted with the simple stripes in the earlier film, and while he was sitting right behind a woman before, he is now sitting right behind a man when he approaches the coed. Oh, and the girl he meets, Granville here, has a totally different hair style than the other actress, Susan Peters, who played the unnamed woman in the earlier film.

Now the producers likely didn't care about the obvious differences, and with a two-year gap in viewing, they would have figured nobody will notice. I had a gap of one day, so I noticed a few things.

Viewers learned that the young blonde Andy keeps flirting with on the train-not Granville-is not one young woman, but twins. Andy keeps seeing one smiling at him, then when he tries to be fresh, he is doing so with the other, less friendly, twin. I think it would have been more interesting if we viewers were kept in the dark about there being two identical young women on the train for a while.

Granville's character is named Kay, and she is all about being a top notch student, while Andy...well, at one point I asked aloud, "Is he ever going to do anything concerning his education or is he only going to college to see how many girlfriends he can accumulate?" Kay and Andy meet a Dr. Standish, who takes an interest in both of them. It turns out there's a very good reason for this. The twins, Lee and Lyn, are the same age, but they have their own troubles and Andy comes to the rescue, first with money, then he really gets involved in helping them work out their problems with their father.

Andy was told about various hazings the boys would treat him to, but this never materialized, nor did several of the other things he was warned about. Early on, he looked like he was going to be in real trouble because Dad forgot to give him his train ticket. But it was easily resolved and we wondered why they bothered clogging down the script with that plot point. He was shown attending class one time, but the going to college bit was not the focus here.

We are treated to a few scenes of his family back home-really just his parents, no sister. And the judge does come for a visit at just the right time, helping his "number one" son just when he needs it most.

The details aren't important. It was moderately funny, definitely interesting, more light-hearted than some of these films. I would describe this series as comfortable movies to view on a rainy day-or a day when you are home sick with a bad cold. My mom loved to watch them on Sunday mornings when a local channel aired them often-along with Shirley Temple films and others-while preparing Sunday dinner. She felt you could enjoy them without having to be watching every second of the movie. I agree.

This one gets a 6 from me.