Nancy Drew’s third big-screen adventure gets under way when her lawyer father (John Litel) is alerted to come help Matt (Aldrich Bowker), a crabby old farmer accused of murdering a neighbor. Matt says the sheriff is “a gol darn liar.” Mr. Drew frames their sudden getaway as a farm vacation so Nancy won’t stick her snoopy nose in his gol darn business. She does anyway.

Coincidentally, vacationing there at the same time is Ted Nickerson (Frankie Thomas, TV’s Tom Corbett, Space Cadet), Nancy’s clumsy, platonic-for-now pal who quickly tires of her investigating nature: “Now, look, will ya cut the bubble-gum talk and give?” (I’m not sure what his problem is; he’s the one wearing a sweater with a hand-drawn sailboat on it, surrounded by random names like Butch Hogan, Darby McGraw, Popeye, Jimmy, Jiggs, Jeepers Creepers and Fanny W.)

I expected Nancy to get herself involved in crazy farm shenanigans; I didn’t expect to encounter one of the era’s cringing African-American dumb-goon stereotypes. Here, it’s in the form of Apollo (Willie Best, aka Sleep ‘n’ Eat, The Ghost Breakers), who tries to hide a hot roasted chicken up his shirt and pass off the pain with, “I guess I jes’ born jitterbug.” Almost as bad, he’s terrified of ghosts, which causes Apollo to burst through fences when Ted is accidentally covered in flour. Repeat: flour.

Racism aside, franchise director William Clemens has a knack for staging some lively set pieces that double as both action and physical comedy, from Nancy and Ted running from a live bull (caveat: via sped-up film) to trying to land a biplane after the pilot bails. Loop-de-loops ensue. As far as patience goes, Trouble Shooter is no trouble at all. —Rod Lott

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As the title so blatantly gives away, Nancy Drew … Reporter finds America’s sweetheart sleuth giving journalism a try. Not for altruistic reasons, but for the local newspaper’s prize of “$50 and a gold medal.” Leave it to Nancy (Bonita Granville) to pull a switcheroo so she can cover a front-page murder investigation.

Ignoring all journalism ethics, Nancy throws the concept of being unbiased out the window so she can work to free the woman she’s just sure is wrongly imprisoned: “Isn’t it a whopper?” In doing so, Nancy gets in a fender-bender, drives dangerously, meets a boxer named Soxie, and even eats breakfast cereal annoyingly. You know, come to think of it, Nancy’s kind of a manipulative nag, but boy, she sure can solve a mystery!

The second of the four-film series proves as frothy and accessible as the first, if you can get past the Asian stereotype who pops up at a Chinese restaurant where Nancy and friends are short by 65 cents. Thus, she, Ted (Frankie Thomas, whose character is suddenly no longer named Ned), Ted’s little sister and her pal Killer literally sing for their supper, and the crowd digs Killer’s killer Donald Duck impression.

The sequence serves no other purpose than to wedge in a musical number, which audiences of the era apparently ate up. Crack open the Flick Attack fortune cookie for my verdict: “I’ll allow it.” (Also, your lucky numbers are 07, 16, 33 and 84.) —Rod Lott

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In her first screen outing, Nancy Drew — Detective, Carolyn Keene’s all-American teen she-Sherlock (Bonita Granville) is out to solve the sudden disappearance of an old biddy who was due to donate a bundle of cash to the local girls’ club to build a swimming pool. And Nancy sure as shit wants that swimming pool!

Getting no help from “that conceited tweet-tweet” police Capt. Tweedy (Frank Orth), Nancy enlists the help of platonic pal Ned Nickerson (Frankie Thomas), the clumsy neighbor boy with the side-swirly haircut and propensity to drop tools on his toes. He’s also a dud in overall social skills, according to Nancy: “You’re about as chivalrous as an oyster!”

In the climax, Nancy threatens the bad guys with a gun, holding it with disgust as if it were a penis.

The squeaky-clean, super-efficient mystery involves chasing a pigeon carrying a secret message; slapstick with a wrench; dressing Ned in drag, disguised as a nurse; and communicating via the cutting-edge technology of Morse code. Speaking of dated, the flick is filled with now-odd slang, like “Aw, stop disturbin’ the molecules!” Even when presented in context, that made no sense to me, but like the rest of the hour-long adventure, I sure did enjoy it. —Rod Lott

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Archeologist, puzzle solver and true gentleman Professor Layton jumps from the Nintendo DS to the movies in the animated feature Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva. The Japanese film is pegged as an early adventure of the prof (Christopher Robin Miller, who’s voiced the role in some of the games) and his “apprentice No. 1,” Luke (Maria Darling, ditto), the scrappy youth who handles his mentor’s letters and tea.

Beginning with a locked-room mystery for a prologue, the story takes shape as a concert hall full of performers and patrons alike — including a football player and an Agatha Christie-esque author — magically disappear and are thrown into a game of adventure, where the stakes are high and the winner gets — or so they’re told — the gift of eternal life.

Along the way, the group faces sharks on a ocean voyage, an island rife with hungry wolves, and a castle filled with labyrinthian tunnels, through which they’re pursued by phantom-masked henchmen. It’s cute, enjoyable and better than your average anime, for which director Masakazu Hashimoto has been responsible in the past.

Other than clean character and set design, two things set Eternal Diva apart, even if the movie is ultimately inconsequential. One is the element of steampunk that’s infused into its latter half. The other is, of course, the puzzles that Professor Layton and the others encounter. It makes the lead character appealing as a Sherlock Holmes for pint-sized audiences … and their parents. —Rod Lott

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I was worried, but the Thin Man series ends swell with a jazz-themed return to the formula and the kind of comedy that made the series great. Song of the Thin Man has Nick and Nora back in New York, again trying to solve a murder in order to prove the innocence of a friend. In this case, the friend is Phil Brant, who owns a gambling ship and has an argument with Tommy Drake, who leads the club’s jazz band. When Drake turns up dead in Brant’s office, Nick grabs his cocktail shaker and goes to work.
 
Instead of Nick drunkenly and good-naturedly suffering the company of snooty rich folk, Song shakes things up a bit by having him drunkenly and good-naturedly suffering the company of hepcats. It’s brilliant, because his reaction to both is nearly identical, but the hepcats are infinitely less irritating (and so, more entertaining) than wealthy snobs. Also, Nora’s even more of a treat than usual once she gloms onto the hepcats’ lingo and starts using it correctly, much to Nick’s befuddlement.
 
Nick Jr. appears again in this installment, but he’s about 10 or 11 years old and not played for cute anymore. Dean Stockwell (TV’s Quantum Leap) plays him and carries his own as a bona fide member of the wisecracking family. At bedtime one night, he asks for a story. “No story for you tonight,” Nick says, “You’ve got to get some sleep.” Says Stockwell, “But your stories always put me to sleep,” delivering the line almost as perfectly as William Powell reacts to it.

The Thin Man series is famous for presenting marriage as something that people might actually want to do. With Song of the Thin Man, it does the same thing for parenting. —Michael May

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