Not to be confused with Young Man With Ideas

Unfortunately, I've come down with a bad cold at just the wrong time of the year, so I don't have the energy to do reviews that are as extensive as I'd like. Thankfully, I recently watched a movie that doesn't need a big review: Young Ideas.

Mary Astor plays Jo Evans, a writer who's recently written an extremely successful -- and rather racy -- novel about life in Paris. Her agent Trent (Allyn Joslyn) has sent her on a speaking tour to discuss the book, but she hasn't shown up to her last several engagements, much to Trent's consternation.

The reason why she hasn't shown up is that she stopped in the college town of Digby, PA, where she met chemistry teacher Michael Kingsley (Herbert Marshall). It was love at first sight, and they got married, with Jo planning to live with Kingsley in Digby. This just won't do.

Jo has two young adult daughters, son Jeff (Elliott Reid) and daughter Susan (Susan Peters), and they're not pleased at all with the idea of their mom getting remarried to... a chemistry professor? So Jeff cooks up a scheme to turn Michael against his new wife.

Frankly, Jeff comes across as a really spoiled jerk here. He does get his comeuppance at the end, but not after any number of complications. Jeff and Susan both enroll at Digby, and while there Susan falls in love with English professor Tom Farrell (Richard Carlson), which is against university rules. But it make her think that perhaps they shouldn't be plotting against Mom. She becomes even more certain of this when Jeff tries to turn Tom against Susan.

This is a standard-issue MGM programmer, nothing particularly noteworthy, and not particularly bad except for the way the characters are written. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, but is really one of those movies that should be in a box set instead of (or in addition to) a standalone DVD.