Psycho's Movie Reviews #364: The Little Rascals (1994)

The Little Rascals is a 1994 American family comedy film produced by Amblin Entertainment, and released by Universal Pictures on August 5, 1994. The film is an adaptation of Hal Roach's Our Gang, a series of short films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (many of which were broadcast on television as The Little Rascals) which centred on the adventures of a group of neighbourhood children. The film, with a screenplay by Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur, and Penelope Spheeris – who also directed – presents several of the Our Gang characters in an updated setting, and features re-interpretations of several of the original shorts. It is the first collaboration by Guay and Mazur, whose subsequent comedies were Liar Liar and Heartbreakers.

Another film based on Our Gang, The Little Rascals Save the Day, was released as a direct-to-video feature in 2014.

Plot

Spanky is the president of the "He-Man Woman ('woman' is misspelled as 'womun') Haters Club" with many school-aged boys from around the neighbourhood as members. His best friend, Alfalfa, has been chosen as the driver for the club's prize-winning undefeated go-kart, "The Blur", in the annual Soap Box Derby style race. However, when the announcement is made, Alfalfa is nowhere to be found.

The boys catch Alfalfa in the company of Darla. The club's members try their hardest to break the two apart, eventually causing their beloved clubhouse to burn down. Darla is mistakenly led to believe Alfalfa feels ashamed of her, so she turns her attentions to Waldo, the new rich kid whose father is an oil tycoon. Spanky, Stymie and friends judge Alfalfa's punishment to be left guarding the go-kart day and night until the day of the race. Until that day comes, Alfalfa makes many attempts to woo back Darla including a visit to her ballet rehearsal, an undelivered love letter, and through serenade, all of which fail.

In order to rebuild their clubhouse, the boys try to fund-raise the cost of lumber, $450. But the youngest ones, Porky and Buckwheat, have unknowingly come up with $500. Their school teacher finds out about the scheme, but Spanky convinces her to use the funds as prize money for the go-kart derby.

"The Blur" is stolen by local bullies Butch and Woim. In addition to having to rebuild the clubhouse, the boys now need a new set of wheels. They band together to build "The Blur 2: The Sequel." Prior to race day, Spanky and Alfalfa reconcile and decide to ride in the two-seat go-kart together. They hope to win the prize money and the trophy, to be presented to the victors by the greatest racer of all, "A.J. Ferguson."

Butch and Woim make several sneaky attempts to stop Alfalfa and Spanky from winning the race. Waldo, who (seemingly) kicks out Darla from his race car, pulls a few tricks of his own. It's a wild race to the finish, but "The Blur 2" crosses the finish line ahead of the pack (and resulting in a photo-finish between "The Blur" and "The Blur 2" literally "by a hair" due to Alfalfa's pointy hairstyle), despite the many scrapes and crashes throughout the derby. When Butch and Woim try to beat up Alfalfa, he knocks Butch into pig slop and Woim throws himself in.

Along with first prize, Alfalfa also wins back Darla's heart after it turns out that Darla kicked Waldo out of the car, not the other way around. Spanky, meanwhile, is shocked at the trophy presentation when he finally meets his favourite driver, A.J. Ferguson -- "a girl!" As soon as the club house is rebuilt, the boys collectively have a change of heart toward membership and welcome Darla and friends to their club, with "Women Welcome" added to the sign.

Production

Bill Thomas Jr., son of the late Bill Thomas, who played the original Buckwheat, contacted the studio and was invited down to visit the set, but got the impression that the filmmakers did not want him or any of the surviving original cast members involved in any production capacity. The surviving cast members saw this as especially hurtful, in light of the fact that director Penelope Spheeris had previously made a point of including Buddy Ebsen, from the original Beverly Hillbillies, in her 1993 feature film adaptation of that series. Eugene Jackson, who played the original Pineapple from the silent Our Gang comedies, tried unsuccessfully to contact the studio to be a part of production, stated, "It's real cold. They have no respect for the old-timers. At least they could have recognized some of the living legends surviving from the first films." Filming took place from January 11, 1994 to April 6, 1994.

Release/Reception/Box Office

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 23% based on reviews from 13 critics as of April 2020. On Metacritic it has a score of 45 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A-" on scale of A to F.

Brian Lowry of Variety magazine wrote: "Those who grew up watching The Little Rascals may well be intrigued by the idea of introducing their kids to this full-colour, big screen version. Still, the challenge of stretching those mildly diverting shorts to feature length remains formidable, and one has to wonder whether an audience exists beyond nostalgic parents and their young children."

The Little Rascals earned $10 million at the North American box office during its opening weekend. The film grossed a worldwide total of $67,308,282.

Box office $67.3 million

{I love this 'Then Vs Now' picture from the reunion}

My Review

Films and television shows that are trying to be cute to gain laughs can be quite irritating. They often rely on the audience gaining some sort of emotional investment out of seeing an adorable baby character, or young toddler, that says lines that no young kid would say, and the usual reaction is "Aaawwww!" (Full House did this for years). These types of cinema have no reason for existence, and usually try to serve as cheap entertainment that families can enjoy together. This movie is chalk full of little children doing things children would never do, no doubt with the director feeding them lines that they don't understand because they can't read yet. But, where this film is different is it's set up. The universe that these "little rascals" live in isn't the one we live in. It's some kind of parallel universe where children own their own cars and have very elaborate clubhouses, and where very young children go on romantic dates. And never once is this particularly corny. What could be a by the numbers movie turns out to be a sort of charming little movie that is fun and funny in a surreal way.

Little Alfalfa (Bug Hall) is in a group of girl-hating little boys, and they find out about his upcoming romantic date with Darla (Brittany Ashton Holmes), and they sabotage him. Meanwhile a new rich kid Waldo (Blake Ewing) has just moved in and Darla finds him quite appealing, so Alfalfa is down in the dumps. Hopefully the up-coming go-cart race is a chance for Alfalfa to get his lady back, in addition to beat Waldo, and bond with his child pal Spanky (Travis Tedford).

This kids in this movie are actually all really good actors, and that's one thing that makes this movie work. Bug Hall is one of the better young actors out there, and all the ridiculous silly lines that the kids say (though kids clearly wouldn't say in real life) are said with enough conviction, yet with a clear wink from the director and writer(s). The kids say their lines well, but with a slightly over the top script, and the mixture comes off as pretty funny.

The film runs at a brisk pace, with enough jokes to make up for it's overall lack of plot. The sets would have to be pretty cool looking to a child (at least they were to me!). The clubhouse that the kids built is designed to look like it was built by kids, but at the same time, it's so surreally elaborate. And this movie has plenty of surrealism and absurdist humour. Things will happen that make very little sense, but come off as hilarious because of how ridiculous the situation is. In one scene during the big race at the end, giant daggers come out of a kid's car and start stabbing another car. It's so ridiculous, but in the context of the movie, it comes off as normal in this universe, and jokes like this that might normally seem very over the top, play off quite well. If anything was unnecessary here, it was the numerous cameos that usually show up for no reason at all. A few of them were funny, but most of them seemed somewhat forced. Kids probably won't know who most of these people are anyways, so they won't understand that these are cameos.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable family film, with good performances (from kids no less), and a lot of really silly jokes that hit the mark. In an average episode of Full House, I probably cringe about 10 times, but in this much longer film featuring even more kids including cameos by the Olsen Twins, there was not one moment of cringing. It's actually pretty fun. 6.9/10