Review of These Wilder Years

Cagney and Stanwyck are superb - real pros, and it is true that "Wilder" neatly avoids descending into an unabashed tearjerker. Also the broad storyline is sociologically compelling. Nevertheless, I couldn't overlook two plot contrivances that rankled throughout the ninety minutes. First, Cagney looks and acts much older that the purported forty. He's fifty-five if he's a day (he was fifty-seven when the movie was made), but the plot requires that he be a relative spring chicken. Second, certainly Miss Demster would have told him early on that she would inform his son that his biological father would like to meet him and leave it up to the son and his adoptive parents to decide how to proceed. Instead the storyline requires that turn of events for the denouement. Nevertheless, I was absorbed into the atmosphere, and the relationship between the tycoon and the teenager is very affecting.