This is an issue that goes back generations. Perhaps as one of the Smothers Brothers said, Cain said to Abel before he struck that blow, "Mom always did like you best!" But here, the troubled youth (Robert Lowell) is an only child, and so what if his mother showed up drunk at a school function, the words of students and faculty echoing through his nightmares. The very next scene, he's praising them to nightclub singer Mary Beth Hughes who looks ten years at least older than him, stealing the Barbara Stanwyck look from "Double Indemnity", made the same year with better results.
Other than the blame game at the beginning, this actually starts off pretty good even with the inconsistencies regarding Lowell's lady who lunches mama. It goes haywire and becomes ultra camp when Lowell takes up with Hughes and finds a rival in Hughes's boss, an obvious gangster. His erratic behavior becomes of concern to the negligent parents, and ultimately Hughes is forced to humiliate him which leads to a strange scene with a kindly greasy spoon owner who has to be the most aggressive of good Samaritans that I have ever seen and leads to a confrontation and accidental death and a finger wagging judge that ends the film on a truly laughable note. This becomes fun bad schlock within seconds which gives this film a second personality. I wouldn't want to see thus with wise cracking robots spoiling this for me. It is fine just the way it is.
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