Lazy Days

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.

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

It's LAZY DAYS for Farina, who is so tired laying in the shade that the least amount of effort is a bother to him. Only Fat Joe Cobb's plan to make money by entering the Gang's younger siblings in a baby contest can get Farina on his feet.

An amusing little film, with some good laughs. Chubby makes a unique 'baby', to say the least. Highlight: Farina washing his little brother, with help from a bee, frog & monkey.

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.

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.

This film is truly lazy.Very drawn out and lethargic.The story is dull and not funny.Who would have believed the rotund Chubby was actually a baby?Seeing Farina's baby brother cry continually seems cruel.Not to mention Mary Ann and Jean dressing Wheezer up as a baby against his will!Only to have the end never see the baby contest happen.A real let down.