Boxing Gloves

This is a fairly entertaining early sound Our Gang short. Both Joe and Chubby are easy to like in this one, as is the underrated and under appreciated Farina. Joe's face of anger as his hair gets messed up is priceless. The actual boxing sequence between the two "heavyweights" does contain a few nice chuckles. The film is more a sound "hybrid" as opposed to a full all-talking short. This is what hurts the film in the end. The audio track shows the ravages of time and there are long segments of complete silence that hampers the overall effect. Still, it's hard to find real fault with this or any of the Our Gang series but when stacked up against other shorts from the series, it's serviceable at best.

Boxing Gloves (1929)

*** (out of 4)

Fat Joe and Chubby agree not to fight over girls and that promise lasts a few seconds until one walks by wanting a soda. Farina sees them fighting and decides to put them in his boxing ring in order to make some money. This is the first of the sound Our Gang shorts that I really liked and this one here benefits from a nice screenplay as well as better technical qualities. It seems the quality of this early sound features finally went over well as there aren't any annoying glitches or performances due to the new technology and this makes for a more pleasant film. The screenplay here also has a narrative for the first time out of the first four shorts and it's a very good one. We get all sorts of nice and funny action with the two fat kids running around having their pants ripped and fighting. The boxing match contains plenty of laughs as the two kids think the other is going to fall down in the second round but the thing just keeps going. Jackie Cooper makes his first appearance here.

Farina and his partner have started a backyard boxing business, but they can't sell any tickets because they only have babies like Wheezer doing the fighting. So, when they see Joe and Chubby about to have a fight, they take full advantage of this and encourage them to duke it out in their boxing ring. The problem is that Joe and Chubby aren't very tough kids and don't seem to want to fight. And, during the fight they keep avoiding each other--Chubby is afraid and Joe doesn't feel mad enough to fight. Eventually, though, they get the hang of it--thanks to Joe having his hair mussed.

While you won't notice at first that it's one of the Gang's earliest sound films, it becomes apparent during the fight when the sound cuts out for a bit--and it's pretty obvious. It also represents the first appearance in these films by Jackie Cooper--though his part is rather small. As far as the quality of the film goes, it's amazingly limp considering the subject matter. There's barely a laugh and it's certainly not among the better films of this series.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Boxing Gloves, is the ninety-first in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the third talkie. A partial remake of the silent The Champeen, this one has Joe and Chubby fighting over Jean when she asks for a soda pop which gives Farina an idea to put them in the boxing ring. I'll stop there and just say that while the beginning with the repeat of the soda pop running back and forth gag from the previous short I mentioned was again handled well, the boxing scenes aren't as funny especially when those scenes are absent of any crowd noise since this was a part talkie at best. I guess some of the technical problems of doing sound pictures hadn't been ironed out yet. Of note is the fact this marked the first series appearance of one Jackie Coooper who's at the beginning demanding his money back because of the initial fight between toddler Wheezer and another one his age which is lackluster. Jackie will eventually take the leading role in the gang. Directed by Anthony Mack, Robert McGowan's nephew. On that note, Boxing Gloves is still worth a look for any Our Gang completists out there.

This is the fourth Little Rascals sound film. It is very short, at only 17 minutes. Unfortunately, about half the sound track is missing, so that as the film is cut, we go from sound scenes to silent scenes and back and forth like that. Farina is trying to make some money out of staging a boxing match for which he can charge admission. Farina sees Joe and Chubby fighting rather feebly over a girl and decides that they would be good in the ring. The only problem is that 'Joe doesn't get mad and Chubby is scared', so something must be done to get them fighting properly. They agree to go into the ring. But Farina has discovered a secret about Joe which is that Joe is very vain about his hair, which must always be neatly combed. As Joe says: 'There ain't nothing that gets be madder than havin' my hair mussed.' So as the fight proceeds, Farina arranges for Joe to get his hair mussed up, which drive him wild and a savage fight then takes place. Although they wear heavily padded gloves, the kids are doing their own fighting and they whack each other with terrible force over and over again, and nowadays nothing like that would be allowed. But it was 1929 and 'everything goes'. At one point they knock each other out simultaneously. During all of this, Mary Ann keeps trying to sneak in to see the fight and being thrown out, but disguises herself as a boy and even wears a false moustache at one point. She ends up being able to see the fight, and Pete the Dog does as well. (He looks really interested in it.) Some of the regulars do not appear in this film, and a large extra cast of boys appears in the film as the audience and as troublemakers because they are older. All the long shots of the roaring audience of boys have lost their sound. The directorial credit for this film says it was directed by Anthony Mack 'under the supervision of Robert A. McGowan', but as IMDb makes clear, Anthony Mack was a pseudonym for McGowan for numerous Little Rascals films. I must confess myself puzzled as to why it was necessary for McGowan to pretend to be somebody else under the supervision of himself. Perhaps someone cleverer than myself knows the answer to this mystery. This is a rather disappointing Little Rascals film, and seems a bit half-hearted.