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Small Town Girl (MGM) is a Technicolored trifle about a playboy (Farley Granger) who is jailed for speeding through a small town. By Hollywood justice, he finds himself not only in the clutches of the law but also in the arms of the judge's pretty daughter (Jane Powell). She smuggles fried chicken and mince pie into his cell, regales him by singing Small Towns Are Smile Towns, and sneaks him out of jail for a night on New York town. This does not please the playboy's fiancee, Dancing Star Ann Miller. By the fadeout the playboy's 30-day jail sentence has been commuted, and he has the judge's daughter for life. The movie's most striking feature: a dance routine in which leggy Ann Miller taps her way among a disembodied orchestra surrealistically imbedded in a musicomedy stage.
Off Limits (Paramount) casts durable Funnyman Bob Hope as a prizefight manager turned military policeman. Hope tangles with a frozen-faced sergeant (Eddie Mayehoff) and an apoplectic general, gets seasick watching his protege, MP Mickey Rooney, box on board a battleship, masterminds a championship fight via walkie-talkie and falls for Rooney's beautiful aunt (Marilyn Maxwell), easily the best-looking aunt of the year. Making brief personal appearances in the picture: Bing Crosby, Jack Dempsey, ex-Footballer Tom Harmon. The result, though no main movie event, is a fairly entertaining, lightweight preliminary.