Time Out for Lessons

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!

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.

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.

"Time Out For Lessons" was a pretty good short, it is okay to have fun, as long as you do not neglect your schoolwork, his friends were pretty furious when they heard that he did not study before the big game. I give this short *******out of**********.