Tiny Troubles

This M-G-M comedy short, Tiny Troubles, is the one hundred seventy-seventh entry in the "Our Gang" series and the eighty-ninth talkie. Alfalfa and the gang are at a police station with the little adult criminal "Light-Fingered Lester" (Jerry Maren) and his tall female accomplice. They're mistaken for part of Lester's gang so Alf tells in flashback how his baby brother was constantly crying and since the infant originally came from behind a tree, he decides to trade for a "quieter" model from the same place where Lester was hiding in baby clothes. I'll stop there and just say this was quite a ridiculous plot for an Our Gang comedy concerning the use of midgets disguised as children even though it was used successfully before in previous series entries like Free Eats and Shrimps for a Day. The idea that 11-year-old Alfalfa and 10-year-old Spanky would mistake Lester for an infant just didn't wash. So anything that follows doesn't hold water, either. At least when the lesson does come, it's not too heavy handed so there's that. So in summary, Tiny Troubles isn't very funny but it's not completely embarrassing to the point of no return yet, either. P.S. Maren would later in the year become one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

I believe this is the worst OUR GANG film of the late thirties - and I've seen GENERAL SPANKY, TIME OUT FOR LESSONS, DOG DAZE and every other entry from 1935 - 1939. No other can touch the astounding badness of TINY TROUBLES. The drop in quality between this film and the decent ALFALFA'S AUNT must be some kind of series record. When Alfalfa emerges from the house in the first scene all bleary-eyed and groggy I imagine him being released from some satanic ritual that laid a curse on most of the later films.

The story is nonsense at every turn, the acting is mostly weak (who can blame them) and the lecturing adults are insufferable. It isn't so-bad-it's-amusing, though (like a few of the Metro episodes). It's bad in a depressing way. There is not one entertaining moment in the entire short.

Policemen bring in Light Fingered Lester and his mother, a pickpocket team. They also bring in Our Gang. Alfalfa tries to plead their innocence and recounts what happened. The Gang finds Lester hiding in a tree and pretending to be a baby. They assume that he's a real baby and bring him back to Alfalfa's home. Lester is soon wrecking havoc as he smokes up a cigar.

This is fun. Lester is a fun villain. Evil pretend baby is just a fun premise. Our Gang has a lot fun chasing after the evil baby. A better ending would be Our Gang looking sad from behind prison bars. Alfalfa could put a button on the scene.

Tiny Troubles (1939)

** (out of 4)

Another mildly entertaining but overall weak Our Gang short from MGM. This time out Alfalfa is forced to watch his baby brother who he can't stand because he's always crying all night and keeping Alfalfa up. He decides to trade the baby in for another and he thinks he's found the perfect baby but it's actually a midget criminal who poses as a baby. Yes, you can say this is a re-working of the Lon Chaney silent and sound film THE UNHOLY THREE but this here isn't nearly as clever. Throughout the short 9-minute running time I'd say there was probably just one decent laugh and the rest of the film just seemed lacking humor or anything special for that matter. The majority of the film has the gang chasing around the "baby" who they catch doing several things a real baby shouldn't and that includes smoking and drinking beer. I'm going to guess that the writers thought seeing a fake baby drink beer would be funny but it certainly wasn't. There's really not any good jokes in the film and for the most part the entire structure is just poorly set up and the film just keeps moving along without anywhere to really go. Fans of Our Gang will probably still want to check it out but others should just stay clear.