The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

Revisiting story elements from one sequence in Together Again (1944) but now with a judge (Myrna Loy), her teenage sister (Shirley Temple) and a painter (Cary Grant) rather than a small-town mayor, her teenage sister and a sculptor.

Now, however it is the painter who is blackmailed by the judicial family into dating the teenager "until she gets over it," (an obviously bad idea for someone already in a messy legal predicament,) which she doesn't even do.

Instead, the court psychologist uncle (Ray Collins) talks her out of it in private, and we don't even get to hear the conversation!

It would have been nice to have the plan somehow work out on its own.

In the meantime, Grant takes Temple to a basketball game; then to a picnic where he begins to realize he can try and overstay his welcome by embarrassing the teenager by not acting his age.

At the picnic, the judge's current suitor (Rudy Vallée) begins to see something develop which he doesn't like, and the race for the real prize begins.

While the situation is clearly uncomfortable for all involved (including the audience,) it's made slightly better by the fact that it is established all a ruse quite early; that Grant clearly has no interest in Temple (and yet he tortures the family by pretending, at one point); and that Temple is seventeen, only one year before being fully legal.

One can begin to relax once it's made obvious that Grant and Loy will end up together.

The film is very funny, even when you can see the template it is following.

A table at a club serves the same function as the Marx Brothers' crowded cabin in Monkey Business (1931); as more and more people keep getting added to it the scene just keeps getting funnier and funnier (to me, the comedic highlight of the film.)

The picnic competition is the chance for Grant to show off physically; but what makes it work comedically is that he keeps losing, thereby disappointing Temple more and more with each loss. Rudy Vallée's efforts to show off only result on the opposite of what was intended.

This movie might have influenced the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) classroom scene with its swooning female students, and also, the inexplicable "Man with the Power" routine in Labyrinth (1986) which, considering the differences of ages between David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly might now make all the sense in the world.

I Love Lucy also used a similar plot for one of its TV episodes.

With Johnny Sands, Harry Davenport and Lillian Randolph.