Farm Hands

As a kid, I loved this short. I think my tolerance for Mickey's bad acting was higher (but still not all that high). It's still kind of cute in its own way, but once again, whatever "gags" are here are ruined by MGM's bad sense of pacing.

Buckwheat tries to milk a cow just by setting glass bottles below it and standing next to it. As far as gags go, this is a far cry from "Mush and Milk" when the kids would rig a vacuum cleaner for the cow (though a lot less abusive, I will admit). In the meantime, we see Mickey get dumped into a well (yay!) and Froggy carried up by an obvious piece of wire as a mule bucks him off.

In this short, there's also another kid named "Happy". You know, what's very odd about MGM's later shorts is that they simply could not find other kids who could act. They all dispense their lines wearily, as if making movies was the most depressing thing in their lives. Compared to some of the ancillary characters, Mickey's manic screeching is at least notable for its ENERGY.

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

Mickey, Buckwheat, Froggy & Happy are going to try to be real FARM HANDS while staying at the farm of Mickey's Uncle George. However, the Rascals' encounters with the cow, mule, chickens, water well & hay baler all have predictable results.

Not many laughs in this little film. Buckwheat is the only `old-timer' here & he's obviously getting older. The farm setting is a pleasant change, though.

Farm Hands has one huge thing going for it: Janet Burston's not in it. The death knell for MGM's Our Gang's was the fact that as Hal Roach's holdovers aged they were invariably replaced by an unlikable cast of untalented kids (the sole exception was Buckwheat) in unfunny plots that usually centered around a lesson. This mentality was a radical departure from the earlier, vastly more entertaining Roach/McGowan entries; unfortunately these later MGM installments are what most people have seen. Here, by 1943, MGM had been producing the series for 5 years and allowed it to descend into what might be called benign disinterest only to be summarily shelved when studio bean counters pointed out the last several productions had actually lost money in their initial release. As this final roster of kids go, Robert Blake became a decent actor, but you'd never know it from seeing him as a child. Billy "Froggy" Laughlin is a one-trick pony, riding on the voice (okay, he also had crossed eyes), but he never looks like he's actually enjoying himself "acting"--- he reportedly never did and died tragically in his middle teens in a motor scooter accident. Farm Hands has the kids spending some time on Mickey's uncle's farm and has them screwing up their chores, ultimately winding up in a hay baler. All the gags are pretty watered down but at least this short has some action. 2/10.

There was an intermission five minutes before the end. Like a summary (or some such). There is a different intermission for each copy of the film (for no price). My intermission was the view of a lake at night from a camera strapped to a turtles wrist.

Farm Hands (1943)

** (out of 4)

Our Gang short has Froggy, Buckwheat, Mickey and Happy going to farm where everything starts off well enough since they start off having breakfast. From here they go out to work on the farm and that's when things start to go bad.

FARM HANDS isn't an awful film like some of the other shorts in this series but there's no question that it lacks anything original, fun or funny. I say that because there's really not too much here as the setting is pretty much the only thing different from various other shorts in the series. You have the kids trying to milk a cow, feeding chickens and doing other "farm" things but none of it is funny and in all honesty nothing happens here that would even make you crack a smile.