30 Jun Beginner’s Luck (1935)

Inverted Show

This is my favourite Our Gang short. It has everything that I recall fondly: rowdy fellowship and kids conspiring against adults resulting in innocent mischief.

Although the series had already been around a dozen years, for me the master cast was the Spanky, Buckwheat, Alfalfa period. This was the first with them together.

And it has my own favourite trick, the simple fold of a show within the show. That gives the producers an opportunity to have some “straight” child performances. These always have puzzling appeal.

And then there’s the joke performance with us sort of sharing in the audience.

(This is a replacement comment, the original having disappeared because of religious nuts.)

Posted in 2006

Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.

IMDB