Not what you'd think with a title like "The Plastic Age": rather than being about the synthetic nature of contemporary life in the 20s, 'plastic' here means 'malleable' youth-- especially as they leave home for Life in the Big College. In this case, an idealistic young athlete is molded away from 'decency and sobriety' by a 'fast' woman--the story may even have been a cliché by 1925.
What makes the film worth seeing is that the woman, Cynthia Day, the queen of a sorority house, is played by Clara Bow who is sensually animated, sexy and beautiful. This was before her flapper defining turn as the 'It' girl in 'It' (1927); but she proves her worth as an actress here after she decides to break it off with her true love, Hugh Carter (Donald Keith), to stop corrupting his future. While she still pines for him, she forces herself to reject him. Betty Boop is clearly patterned after her, and with good reason. She is hot! We get a major conflict between Hugh and his roommate, played by a young Gilbert Roland, who, while born in Mexico as Luis Alonso, successfully made the transition to sound films and TV, even appearing as the Cisco Kid in six films (1946-1947).
Other than the above, not much of this film goes beyond the clichéd college hi-jinks film. So I can only give it a 6. The funniest college athelete hi-jinks film, of course, is Buster Keaton's 'College' (1927), the last thirty seconds of which is so mind boggling it was stolen by John Boorman and used as the ending of his 'Zardoz' (1974)!
NOTE: I saw 'The Plastic Age' on a 1999 Image Entertainment DVD, which has a fantastically clear and sharp print (with some night time scenes in blue), and a wonderful soundtrack of twenties sounding music which also includes real twenties hits such as "Stumbling," "All Alone," "Who" and "The Sheik of Araby." Also on the disk is 'The Show Off,' (1925) which turns out to be a much better film!
What makes the film worth seeing is that the woman, Cynthia Day, the queen of a sorority house, is played by Clara Bow who is sensually animated, sexy and beautiful. This was before her flapper defining turn as the 'It' girl in 'It' (1927); but she proves her worth as an actress here after she decides to break it off with her true love, Hugh Carter (Donald Keith), to stop corrupting his future. While she still pines for him, she forces herself to reject him. Betty Boop is clearly patterned after her, and with good reason. She is hot! We get a major conflict between Hugh and his roommate, played by a young Gilbert Roland, who, while born in Mexico as Luis Alonso, successfully made the transition to sound films and TV, even appearing as the Cisco Kid in six films (1946-1947).
Other than the above, not much of this film goes beyond the clichéd college hi-jinks film. So I can only give it a 6. The funniest college athelete hi-jinks film, of course, is Buster Keaton's 'College' (1927), the last thirty seconds of which is so mind boggling it was stolen by John Boorman and used as the ending of his 'Zardoz' (1974)!
NOTE: I saw 'The Plastic Age' on a 1999 Image Entertainment DVD, which has a fantastically clear and sharp print (with some night time scenes in blue), and a wonderful soundtrack of twenties sounding music which also includes real twenties hits such as "Stumbling," "All Alone," "Who" and "The Sheik of Araby." Also on the disk is 'The Show Off,' (1925) which turns out to be a much better film!