Some films age badly, but Golden Boy practically decomposes before your eyes. Not the print, which is crisp and beautiful as new in Columbia's recent DVD, but in plot and dialogue its beyond prehistoric. A-list production values it may have, but boy, is it bad.<br /><br />Clifford Odets may have fashioned himself as a champion of the workingman, but his patronising portrayal of violinist-boxer William Holden's immigrant family makes Chico Marx look like Arthur Miller by comparison. No cliché is left unturned, be it Lee J. Cobb's Gepetto-like Ay-a-Tallyana papa, the lovable wife-beating brother-in-law (she loves it really: no, she really DOES) or Holden's Golden Boy playing Brahms' Cradle Song on the violin – you'll be rooting for him to bust his hand so he can never play the violin again. Ye gods, the man even names a black fighter – I'm not kidding – the Chocolate Drop. And the dialogue! The cast should have been paid danger money for going anywhere near it.<br /><br />Barbara Stanwyck and Adolphe Menjou fare better, but Joseph Calleia's mobster is unintentionally funnier than Joe Piscopo's Danny Vermin in Johnnv Dangerously, though he does at least flick a mean cigarette. Even William Holden, in his star-,making role, is strikingly poor here. It's not just that, terrifying but true, he looks like a young Tom Hanks but his acting is clumsy, his voice weak and he occasionally looks unsure of how to act to camera: hard to believe that you're watching the first steps of a future screen great here – indeed, just about the only line to ring true is when Stanwyck tells him "I'll see you in 1966. By then, you may have become somebody." Do yourself a favour and see Body and Soul or The Set-Up instead.