Can Shirley Temple do no wrong? Not in the eye of her Fox employers who continuously cast her as the type of child genius that could reconcile estranged couples, bring peace to waring families and make cranky elders smile even without the benefit of smiling muscles. No temper tantrums or behavioral adjustment medications for her. Not our Miss Shirley.
Sometimes this formula worked ("Little Miss Marker", "Heidi"), sometimes it didn't. But audiences of the 30's didn't mind and many don't today. In the case of "Our Little Girl", it is cute at first, but truly unrealistic. Joel McCrea is a hard-working doctor, Rosemary Ames his housewife and Temple their child psychiatrist who weathers their storms of tempted infatuations and runs away seemingly just to teach them a lesson.
One scene in the film truly disturbed me, where McCrea, driving down a curvy country road, allows Temple to climb all over him and then try to grab something in the convertible's back seat. Another has Ames and McCrea out for the evening (seperately) and Temple left without an apparent baby sitter. I felt that these sequences should have been accompanied by subtitles which stated "Do Not Try This at Home".
Sometimes this formula worked ("Little Miss Marker", "Heidi"), sometimes it didn't. But audiences of the 30's didn't mind and many don't today. In the case of "Our Little Girl", it is cute at first, but truly unrealistic. Joel McCrea is a hard-working doctor, Rosemary Ames his housewife and Temple their child psychiatrist who weathers their storms of tempted infatuations and runs away seemingly just to teach them a lesson.
One scene in the film truly disturbed me, where McCrea, driving down a curvy country road, allows Temple to climb all over him and then try to grab something in the convertible's back seat. Another has Ames and McCrea out for the evening (seperately) and Temple left without an apparent baby sitter. I felt that these sequences should have been accompanied by subtitles which stated "Do Not Try This at Home".