Mickey's Eleven

In this one, Mickey McGuire and his gang play football against a rival gang. This was after they threw stuff at each other in someone's house. I laughed at all the stuff being thrown and Mickey's big jumps during the football game. There's quite a few cartoonish sight gags that I thought were also pretty funny. There didn't seem to be too much plot but it seemed easy to understand nearly the whole time. I suppose if there was one distasteful gag, it would be the one having the football painted like a watermelon so the black kid in the gang would have a motive to catch it! I liked this one much better than the previous Mickey McGuire short I watched on YouTube. So give Mickey's Eleven a shot.

Mickey Rooney stars in this two-reel comedy as Mickey (Himself) Maguire, the pint-sized, cigar-smoking kid. He leads ten of his friends in playing football against the bigger kids, even though, as the titles tell us, he doesn't need them to win; it's just the rules that require the others.

It's based on Fontaine Fox' Toonerville Trolley comic strip, and at this point, the movie series had not shed its origins. There are references to the Powerful Katinka and some adults who suffer as a result of the hijinks.

Like others in the series, it has suffered from age. Jokes include painting the football like a watermelon so the Black kid will catch it, and there are plenty of mechanical gags. Even so, it's a pleasure to see Rooney this early in his career, starring.

During the late 1920s to 1934, Mickey Rooney made 78 Mickey McGuire films. While they were based on a comic strip, "Toonerville Trolley", they films were especially influenced by the success of Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies....and quite a few production companies made faux Our Gang films....most of which were just not very funny.

Here in "Mickey's Eleven", Mickey Rooney is back and, as was often the case, sporting a derby and chomping on a cigar. However, something is odd about the plot in this one...because there really isn't one. Instead, lots of little things happen...and which all add up to nothing particularly funny or memorable. In fact, a couple of the gags are pretty lame--such as painting a football like a watermelon so that black kid would be sure to catch it (uggh!) as well as the pottery....which when it hit became powder. Overall, a very weak Mickey McGuire comedy...because there is no comedy.