Big Ears

BIG EARS is a fine little short from the Our Gang team. What I particularly enjoyed about this one is that the back story is a little darker than you usually see in 1930s-era family comedy, with two bickering parents and their impending divorce acting as a catalyst for some childish shenanigans in which a kid feigns sickness in order to keep his family together.

The film also has a controversial scene in which the kids work their way through a medicine cabinet, trying to figure out which liquids to take in order to make a kid ill. It's business as usual for the Little Rascals here, with some very funny one-liners courtesy of Stymie and plenty of screen time for the reliably endearing Pete the Pup. In short, I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it.

"Big Ears" is a very controversial "Our Gang" comedy dealing with a pending divorce and it's effect on Wheezer. Some fans of these classic shorts will feel uncomfortable watching Wheezer's parents argue on despite their child's pleas for them to stop. Ultimately the gangs slapstick antics lighten up the short and Stymie develops a plan with Wheezer to save the day and marriage.

Contrary to what several people have written here, Big Ears played quite frequently on television. I saw it yesterday for the first time in forty years and remembered almost every detail from seeing it on TV as a kid. As is often the case in Our Gang comedies, there's no great acting on hand, but as is also often the case, the worst acting is by the adults. Wheezer's parents fight and threaten divorce, so Wheezer tries to make himself sick so his parents will come together out of concern for him. There's a pretty hysterical sequence where the kids pour every concoction in the medicine cabinet down Wheezer's throat to help him get sick. Of course it's not recommended for kids actually to do something like this, but trust me, if your kids are able to drink all the medicine in your medicine cabinet, it ain't OUR GANG who's at fault. Wheezer's crying is realistic and touching, and his reactions to the taste of various elixirs is a riot. Very funny short--not the best of the Gang's by a long shot, but a good one nonetheless.

Usually, an Our Gang/Little Rascals film is a guarantee for 20 minutes of laughs and warm feelings. This isn't the case here.

Wheezer is upset because of his parents' constant (and admittedly hammy and unconvincing) arguments around the house about really silly things such as the coffee being cold and the toast not being buttered right. The writers seemed to have been asleep at the wheel on this one. He gets the parents to reconcile, but only briefly. He overhears his dad talking about a divorce, which drives him to go to his pal Stymie for solace. That is disturbed when big kid Donald Haines callously explains to Wheez what a divorce really means (always one in any crowd of kids) which starts the bawling Olympics all over again. This leads to the medicine cabinet scene where Stymie and Dorothy fill Wheez with stuff form the medicine cabinet to make him sick and hopefully encourage his parents to reconcile. Does it work? You'll see.

This is really grim and dark for an Our Gang comedy. Even the few gags that exist are mostly horrible by modern standards. This film would be unwatchable for anyone who's been through a divorce or experienced this as a child (which luckily, I didn't). Adults would be horrified by the sight of the unsupervised children playing with medicine and feeding Wheez whatever they could find. Was this considered funny in 1930? Stymie tells a yarn about his falling out of a window and not hurting his head but leaving a hole in the sidewalk (modern audiences may be unfamiliar with the ancient stereotype of the alleged hardness of Black people's skulls). YECCCH. Then Wheezers dad casually refers to Stymie in conversation with Wheez as a "pickaninnny." I'm no fan of politically correct prudery myself, but racially loaded language of this kind was actually quite rare in the Our Gang films.

Most Gang/Rascals films often climax with funny chase scenes or hilarious moments of suspense. That is not to be found here, just a VERY bad soap opera. This was not known to have been shown on television with the rest of the Gang/Rascals films. Wonder why? See it (with some Pepto-Bismol at your side) and you'll understand.

Whenever I hear a reference to 'the Little Rascals', I cringe. This is partly because I just don't find those kids very funny, but largely because there never really was a 'Little Rascals' movie. Hal Roach's long-running series of low-budget kiddie comedies were actually called the 'Our Gang' shorts ('Our Gang' being the title of the first film in the series). For some reason, the movie prints that have been syndicated for television were retitled 'Little Rascals'. If you own any movies with 'Little Rascals' in the credits, you've got a TV print.

'Big Ears' is one of the few sound-era Our Gang shorts that has never, to my knowledge, been shown on television. A previous IMDb reviewer says that this is because the storyline involves divorce, a traumatic subject for young children. Well, divorce is mentioned in the dialogue, but that's not why 'Big Ears' is too touchy for television.

The central character in 'Big Ears' is little Wheezer, one of the more annoying kids in Our Gang (which is saying a lot!). The title 'Big Ears' doesn't actually refer to over-sized lugs. It's the nickname for somebody who pokes his ears into conversations where he shouldn't be listening. Wheezer overhears his parents having an argument, in which they consider getting divorced. With the typical logic of childhood, Wheezer decides to feign illness in the hope that his parents will be concerned about his health and forget about divorcing. Wheezer's buddy Stymie believes that Wheezer is actually sick, so he raids the medicine chest for something to dose him with. *This* sequence is the reason why 'Big Ears' is never shown on TV. The kids watching at home might get the idea that it's fun to grab random items out of the medicine chest and swallow them. I laughed as Stymie treated Wheezer's nonexistent illness with hair oil and other noxious substances ... but this is definitely not something that impressionable kiddiewinks should be watching.

At one point, Wheezer's father (played a bit too prissily by Creighton Hale) refers to African-American child Stymie as 'the little pickaninny'. A very few of the Our Gang films have racist plot lines -- notably the notorious 'Kid from Borneo' -- but many of the Our Gangs had casual examples of racial stereotyping that are tossed out at random. This is one such example, but it only lasts a few seconds in 'Big Ears' and could easily have been cut out. The real problem is the medicine-chest sequence, which is the only part of this movie that I laughed at. I do like the fact that the Our Gang comedies showed white and black kids playing together as equals, in a time when racial segregation was taken for granted ... but there's still plenty of racial slurs in these movies. I'll rate 'Big Ears' 4 out of 10.