Too Many Women

Hal Roach Studios made a lot of comedies during the 1920s and 30s. Their most famous commodities were Laurel & Hardy, but they also produced Our Gang and other comedies during this same era. In the early 1930s, Roach created a new series...the Boy Friends. Some of the members were older Our Gang members (such as Mickey Daniels) and a few (such as Grady Sutton) were new to the Roach films. Regardless, of all the series films the studio made, the weakest to me were these Boy Friend films. A few were very good...most were less so. "Too Many Women" was a typically weak film.

When the story begins, Mickey is pitching like no one before or since...thanks to animation and some bad direction. It's supposed to be funny...it really isn't. Soon you learn that Mickey is a bit dumb (as usual), as he never notices that Mary (another old Our Gang veteran) is in love with him.

Too often, the gags were second rate. It wasn't just the pitching bit that was poor but the show-throwing scene was only okay...though it was supposed to bring big laughs. The jokes were far from subtle and not that funny...ever. In addition, Mickey was not the most likable leading man, though he generally played lead in these short pictures. Overall, watchable but far from a film I'd rush to see.

When the waitress Mickey Daniels has a crush on gets married, he loses all interest in baseball. His friends send in a bunch of co-eds to help him forget, to no avail in this episode of THE BOY FRIENDS.

Hal Roach conceived this series as "Our Gang As Teens" and that's pretty much what it is: in one sequence, Mary Kornman shows Mickey Daniels an album from when they were little, and it contains clips from the older series. However, the gags in this series are sometimes so wild they lose any connection to reality; and Daniels' mugging is way over the top.