This is the fourth Little Rascals sound film. It is very short, at only 17 minutes. Unfortunately, about half the sound track is missing, so that as the film is cut, we go from sound scenes to silent scenes and back and forth like that. Farina is trying to make some money out of staging a boxing match for which he can charge admission. Farina sees Joe and Chubby fighting rather feebly over a girl and decides that they would be good in the ring. The only problem is that 'Joe doesn't get mad and Chubby is scared', so something must be done to get them fighting properly. They agree to go into the ring. But Farina has discovered a secret about Joe which is that Joe is very vain about his hair, which must always be neatly combed. As Joe says: 'There ain't nothing that gets be madder than havin' my hair mussed.' So as the fight proceeds, Farina arranges for Joe to get his hair mussed up, which drive him wild and a savage fight then takes place. Although they wear heavily padded gloves, the kids are doing their own fighting and they whack each other with terrible force over and over again, and nowadays nothing like that would be allowed. But it was 1929 and 'everything goes'. At one point they knock each other out simultaneously. During all of this, Mary Ann keeps trying to sneak in to see the fight and being thrown out, but disguises herself as a boy and even wears a false moustache at one point. She ends up being able to see the fight, and Pete the Dog does as well. (He looks really interested in it.) Some of the regulars do not appear in this film, and a large extra cast of boys appears in the film as the audience and as troublemakers because they are older. All the long shots of the roaring audience of boys have lost their sound. The directorial credit for this film says it was directed by Anthony Mack 'under the supervision of Robert A. McGowan', but as IMDb makes clear, Anthony Mack was a pseudonym for McGowan for numerous Little Rascals films. I must confess myself puzzled as to why it was necessary for McGowan to pretend to be somebody else under the supervision of himself. Perhaps someone cleverer than myself knows the answer to this mystery. This is a rather disappointing Little Rascals film, and seems a bit half-hearted.
Review of Boxing Gloves
