Michael's Short Film Grade:A-
Review: Fantastically entertaining, silent Our Gang short.
This short was just great. The Our Gang kids were just as great as ever, and prove that they are Just as talented as many great adult comedians. This film is laugh out loud funny. If you don't find the opening scene of this film funny, I'd be surprised. As well as this the kids being scared antics are extremely well done. Farina and Skooter are especially good at this. While a standard movie gag, Joe's reaction to keeping losing his pants thanks to Scooter, is made very funny by all the kids reactions. On top of this how the our gang kids accidently scare the group of people seeing the psychic is equally funny. As with nearly all silent films on which H.M. Walker worked, the intertitles are extremely clever and funny.
What really makes this and most Our Gang films work is the fact that the kids so talented. Finding child actors this talented is extremely hard to do. Those who are much more familiar with the later Our Gang shorts of the talkie era, will notice these aren't the same kids they are familiar with. This is because the eventually grew too old to be in Our Gang shorts (though some would appear grown up in a series of shorts called The Boyfriends, which stared Mickey Daniels one of the members of Our Gang in the silent era, made by the Hal Roach studios, which also made Our Gang films). These kids however are just as talented as the ones those viewers are more familiar with. This makes the Our Gang films even more incredible because the studio was able to do this more than once.
Overall a fantastic short film.
By the way if you ever get the chance to see one of these films in a theater with live musical accompaniment, do it is an incredible experience.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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