Time Out for Lessons

There IS a gag -- at the very beginning. Then Alfalfa's humorless dad comes in and starts lecturing the poor freckled dope about how he can't give up his studies. We go to a college fantasy done completely straight and without an ounce of humor in it. Alfalfa's about to be the hero of the big football game when Waldo arbitrarily marches in and, um, tells him that he can't. And that's the only reason why you shouldn't neglect your studies, because the college you go to won't let you win their football games unless your grades are good. Sure.

Of course, Alfalfa believes what his father tells him, does an about face and does some more stilted lecturing to his friends. Wow. I'm inspired.

Pretty much the solid example of how MGM was driving this thing into the ground. Fortunately the next two entries would provide more in the way of entertainment.

Time Out for Lessons (1939)

* (out of 4)

Alfalfa and Mickey are in a room where they're supposed to be doing homework but they're actually planning out a football play. Alfalfa is on his way out to practice when his father stops him and wants to talk about his future without studying. We then cut to a fantasy sequence where Alfalfa is in school, not studying and it's the night before a big game. TIME OUT FOR LESSONS has a message but it's completely lost throughout the incredibly boring and lifeless story. There have been quite a few negative Our Gang shorts from MGM but this here is certainly the worst that the series has seen up to this point. There's really not too many good things you can say about this other than it thankfully just runs 9-minutes so it's over rather quickly. Outside of this there's really nothing going on here. It's pretty bad when the kids themselves can't bring any charm to the film because they usually do at least that. There's simply no story here and dragging it out doesn't help anything. Even worse is that there's not a single laugh to be had and you really had to wonder what the writers were thinking when they came up with this.

Time Out For Lessons serves as just another example of how MGM ruined the Our Gang series by substituting messages for comedy. Here we see 12-year old Alfalfa fantasizing about a football career at the expense of his homework and the resulting consequences. About the best thing that can be said for this entry is that with the exception of Mickey (Robert Blake) Gubitosi, it lacks the increasingly obnoxious cast that would later infect the series as the old Hal Roach cast outgrew their roles. This is slight comfort compared to having to sit through a humorless one-reel "comedy." Hal Roach would never let this script on the set. MGM would produce a total of 52 Our Gang shorts from 1938-43 (released into 1944), perhaps 5 of them approach the level of the earlier Roach-produced entries. Time Out For Lessons isn't one of them!

I beg to differ with critics such as Leonard Maltin and others who critiqued it as a humorless, moralizing short. I saw humor in the dance scene, in Coach Spanky and Leonard Landy, in both of the dorm and locker room scenes, and the reaction of the kids at the end to the statement by Alfalfa "from now on we take time out for lessons" as if they weren't taking the statement seriously in undertones of "sure, yeah, and I bet". Even the way Alfalfa expressed the statement came across as mocking. The only one who seemed serious and didactic was Alfalfa's dad. I found more humor in this short than such Our Gang classics as "Fly My Kite" and "Dogs is Dogs". I viewed it not as a moralizing short but a moralizing spoof.

This M-G-M comedy short, Time Out for Lessons, is the one hundred eighty-sixth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the ninety-eighth talkie. Alfalfa and Mickey are planning their next football game but before they can do so, Alf's father comes in and tells him about his bad grades and also tells him how his college chances will come to naught if he keeps neglecting studies. From there, it's a dream about what college life is like...Okay, there have been lessons before in an Our Gang comedy but it's usually accompanied by plenty of laughs. Here, the viewer gets hit on the head over and over with it until one forgets this was supposed to be a comedy series. Still, during the dream sequence, one could enjoy the mocking way some of the lines are said as well as some swell dancing sequences during Darla's number. So on that note, Time Out for Lessons is-at the least-worth a look for any OG completists out there.