Lazy Days

This is the third Little Rascals sound film, and it is wonderfully whimsical and amusing. The cast has expanded for this one, both of children and of animals. The film opens with Farina lying prostrate with heat and laziness in a makeshift rocking chair in a small farmyard. He has acquired a friend, a little black girl from next door, whose name is Trellis, played by the six year-old actress Jannie Hoskins. She started appearing in films as a one year-old infant. She had appeared in 22 Little Rascals silent films before this, under three different names: Mango, Arnica, and Zuccini. (Her real life nickname was Zuchini, known in France and Britain as a courgette.) After this, she would appear in only one more Little Rascals film, six years later, TEACHER'S BEAU (1935), and then she would retire from the screen at the great age of 12. (She lived to be 72.) Here, she is rushing back and forth fetching things for the lazy Farina and tending to him as he keeps asking her to do things for him because he is too lazy to get up. Finally, when she refuses one thing, he drolly states: ' Then I ain't gonna marry you when I get big.' The animal cast includes a goat, a donkey, a cat, Pete the Dog (who rocks a baby in a cradle by running back and forth in an ingenious device), hens and chicks, a rooster prostrated with heat, and even a pet monkey belonging to a neighbour. Oh yes, and I must not forget to mention the most important zoological star of all in this film, a bee, whose main interest in life seems to be threatening to sting the Little Rascals. After the extended scenes between Farina and Trellis, we see Joe reading a circular for a 'grand baby contest', and he decides that he and the rest of the gang will take their baby brothers and sisters to enter the contest for Most Beautiful Baby, Fattest Baby, Biggest Baby, etc., and win lots of money for the prizes. However, there are not enough babies, so they fabricate two of them. Mary dresses up three year-old Wheezer as a baby, and Joe stuffs Chubby into large baby clothes to try for the prize of Fattest Baby. Off they go, pushing all their real and pretend babies in prams. Farina's pram collapses on the way and he goes to lie down in the shade of a large tree. He comforts himself by saying hat he would only have won a quarter (25 cents) anyway, then pulls one out of his pocket, and says: 'I've got a quarter anyway, and I'm too lazy even to spend this one.' Farina's baby brother, Thermos, is played by Junior Allen, who is a genuine infant in a cot. He never appears in any other film, so that this is the only time we see him. In preparing him for the contest, Farina had given him a bath in a zinc tub in the yard, fetching the water from a filthy duck pool. A frog appears in the tub and squirts water in Farina's face several times. As usual, the Little Rascals engage in complete childish anarchy. What fun! Robert F. McGowan directs, as always.

This early Our Gang talkie, the third one of its kind, features "Farina" and his pals down on the farm. It's a lazy day and Farina is so slow-motion that he even has another kid put a straw in his mouth so he can drink. At first, all the animals are lying around doing nothing, too, but eventually they get up and go for swim, or get something to eat,or play.....but "Farina" (Allen Hoskins) just likes there sounding like a young Stephin Fetchit, too "tired" to do anything.

Anyway, after about eight minutes, we finally see the rest of the gang, and things liven up. The kids discover a poster about a baby contest being held later that day with big prize money for the "biggest baby," "cutest baby," "strongest baby" all the way down to "homeliest baby." Wow, what mother wouldn't be proud of that? The kids decide to wash up the little ones, but they don't want any part of it so Chubby pretends, reluctantly, to be the baby. What happens in the contest, I'll leave up to you to see, but the ending is a surprise one.

Most of the gags in this 21-minute "movie" involve Farina. Some reminded me of sight-gags The Three Stooges used, such as a frog spitting a large spray of something in Curly's face. Here, Farina is the victim.

All in all, as other reviewers said here, this isn't one of the better Our Gang talkies, but it's worth one look.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Lazy Days, is the ninety-second in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the fourth talkie. It begins with Farina just laying under the tree with sis Janine doing his every command. Oh, and Pete the Pup also serves a function here: he runs back and forth in some kind of see-saw contraption which not only swings Farina's hammock but also his baby brother's rocking bed! Elsewhere, the rest of the gang discover a baby contest notice and Joe decides to pass Chubby off as the "fattest baby" (Joe should be familiar with that one as he himself was passed off as such in the silent Cradle Robbers). I'll stop there and just say this was one of the most dreary of the early Our Gang talkies-despite some of what I just described-with a slow pace throughout. So on that note, Lazy Days is only worth a look once.

Joe reads an ad for a baby contest and gets the idea of having all the brothers and sisters of the Gang dressed up like babies to win all the prize money--including Joe's brother, Chubby (who looks NOTHING like a baby). In the end, it's all for naught.

One nice thing about the Our Gang comedies is that they were, for the 1920s and 30s, very egalitarian. After all, there were black kids in the gang (such as Farina, Stymie and Buckwheat) and they were treated by the other kids very well--in an era when Black-Americans were, at best, second-class citizens. Yet, sometimes, amidst this anti-racist casting decision by Hal Roach Studios, a bit of the sick prejudices of the age come clearly into focus. In this film, Farina plays a very different sort of character. Here in "Lazy Days" he's incredibly lazy and shiftless--and none of this routine is funny. What's worse is that the end, 'ol Petey the dog rolls a watermelon to Farina--and the credits roll!! Ugghh. Racist AND not particularly funny at the same time. Not surprisingly, when the series was syndicated for television, this was one of the few that was not shown as it was considered too racist for modern sensibilities.

Lazy Days (1929)

BOMB (out of 4)

The gang is sitting around bored out of their minds until Joe sees that a baby contest is being held. The gang gather up their younger brothers and sisters and enter the contest. This third short from the gang is without a doubt the worst I've seen and I might even take it further by saying this is one of the worst films ever made. I didn't find the previous two shorts funny but this one here is just beyond bad in its attempt for humor. I should restate that because there's really no attempt at humor because it appears the screenwriters found torturing a baby to be funny. There's a sequence where Farina has to give his baby brother a bath and as soon as the baby is put into the tub he starts screaming and crying in terror. Do they cut the scene? No they make it worst by putting water on him and then dragging him around the rest of the film. Screaming and crying is the baby the entire time. Is the torturing of this kid funny in 1929 because it's happening to a black kid? I'm really not sure where to stand on the racial issues of this back in 1929 but the scene is incredibly ugly and brutal and to me ranks as one of the nastiest things I've seen in any movie. Even without this scene the movie wouldn't fair any better as the jokes are lame (Chubby as a baby) and the film drawn out.