Y-Yz Movies

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)  A musical portrait of composer/singer/dancer George M. Cohan. From his early days as a child-star in his family's vaudeville show up to the time of his comeback at which he received a medal from the president for his special contributions to the US, this is the life- story of George M. Cohan, who produced, directed, wrote and starred in his own musical shows for which he composed his famous songs.

The Yellow Rose of Texas (1944)  Dale's father has broken out of jail where is doing time for a supposed robbery five years earlier. Roy is an insurance investigator working undercover on Dale's showboat, the "Yellow Rose of Texas." He believes her father will eventually come to the show boat to get the money from the robbery. Songs include "Dowm Mexico Way," "Show Boat," "Take It Easy," "Down in the Old Town Hall," and the title song.

Not a great movie but typical of the cowboy movies I watched as a boy.

You Can't Cheat and Honest Man (1939)  Larson E. Whipsnade runs a seedy circus which is perpetually in debt. His performers give him nothing but trouble, especially Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Meanwhile, Whipsnade's son and daughter, Phineas and Vicky, attend a posh college. Vicky turns down her caddish but rich suitor Roger Bel-Goodie, but changes her mind when she learns of her father's financial troubles. Will Vicky marry for money or succumb to the ventriloqual charm of Edgar Bergen? Will Whipsnade's Circus Giganticus make it over the state line one jump ahead of the sheriff?

You Don't Mess With Zohan (2008)  Zohan Dvir works as a Special Agent and lives with his orthodox parents in Israel. He wants to give up this life full of dangerous encounters with Palestinians. While in the process of apprehending a Palestinian activist known simply as the Phantom, he fakes his death, hides in a dog-kennel on a plane bound for New York, and decides to try his hand as a hair-stylist. He is refused employment initially, but when he offers to work for free, Dahlia hires him as a cleaner. When a hair-stylist named Debbie quits, Zohan replaces her, winning over elderly female clientèle, and falling in love with Dahlia herself. Before Zohan could propose to her, Dahlia's landlord, Walbridge, who has been raising rents regularly, hires skinhead goons to terrorize the neighborhood, creates misunderstandings between Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, and drives them out, so as to enable him to construct a new building which is topped by a roller coaster. When Zohan decides to confront these skinheads, he does not realize that he is in for quite a few surprises himself.

Critics panned this, but it is a ver zany comedy.  You don't see this type of movie anymore, sadly.

Young Doctors in Love (1982)  An 'Airplane'-style spoof of hospital soap operas: a brilliant young trainee can't stand the sight of blood; a doctor romances the head nurse in order to get the key to the drugs cabinet; there's a mafioso on the loose disguised as a woman - in other words all the usual ingredients present and correct, though in this case the laughs are intentional.

Funny but not well done.  Watch the end credits.

Young Einstein (1988)  Albert Einstein is the son of a Tasmanian apple farmer, who discovers the secret of splitting the beer atom to put the bubbles back into beer. When Albert travels to Sydney to patent his invention he meets beautiful French scientist Marie Curie, as well as several unscrupulous types who try to take advantage of the naive genius and his invention.

Delighfully silly fluff.

Marie's farewell letter is based on a quote by Isaac Newton: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Young Frankenstein (1974)  A young neurosurgeon (Gene Wilder) inherits the castle of his grandfather, the famous Dr. Victor von Frankenstein. In the castle he finds a funny hunchback called Igor, a pretty lab assistant named Inga and the old housekeeper, frau Blucher!-. Young Frankenstein believes that the work of his grandfather is only crap, but when he discovers the book where the mad doctor described his reanimation experiment, he suddenly changes his mind.

Mel Brooks' best work IMO.

Yours, Mine and Ours (1968)  With her children, widowed nurse Helen North moves to San Francisco to work at a naval base. There, she meets Naval Officer Frank Beardsley, himself widowed. They are immediately attracted to each other and go on a date. Although they feel their attraction to each other could lead to a more permanent relationship, they decide to call it off when they learn that she has eight children and he has ten. However, Frank's colleague, Naval Officer Darrell Harrison, who also knows Helen, sees the attraction between the two and does whatever he can to push the two together. Despite the obstacles of such a large combined family, and their respective children's dislike of the idea of having a new parent, Helen and Frank decide to get married. They end up having all eighteen of their children living under one roof with them. Together, the children have a "ours" and "theirs" mentality toward their new family unit. The only real bond that immediately emerges is between Helen's adolescent son Philip, who wants so much to be known as a "Beardsley", and Frank's oldest son Mike, who is Philip's protector in navigating through the trials and tribulations of the lives of sixteen other siblings. But things change even more in the household when Mike makes a decision about his future, Frank and Helen make a decision about the children, and when it looks as if there will be an addition to the family, who will not have the burden of being known by any of the other children as one of "them".

The wedding invitation used in the movie is the actual wedding invitation designed by Frank Beardsley, husband of the real Helen Eileen Beardsley. The children's names are listed in their real-life birth order.
Lucille Ball co-produced the film under her company, Desilu Productions. When the film became a surprise smash hit grossing over $17 million on a $2.5 million investment, she became furious about it. She hadn't anticipated the film's huge box-office success and failed to provide a tax shelter for her personal profits, resulting in most of her share going in taxes.
 

You've Got Mail (1998)  Kathleen Kelly, owner of a little and famous bookstore for children's books, has an affair. Being together with Frank Navasky, a well-known journalist, she betrays him by e-mailing secretly and anonymously with a (also betraying) man whom she met in a chat room. Suddenly, her business gets endangered by the opening of Fox Books discount store just "around the corner". She meets Joe Fox, son of the owner, and soon gets annoyed by his arrogant way of managing business matters. Although getting advice by her anonymous mail-pal, she has to close down her store. But Joe Fox's life suddenly gets out of control when he learns that his anonymous mail-pal is nobody other than Kathleen Kelly.