User Reviews

The kids spend some time on the farm. After a tough first night they go to help with the chores and proceed to get into all sorts of trouble.

Good but not great Our Gang comedy is one of the more consistent of the later shorts with a story that remains focused from start to finish (many of the MGM's wander all over the place during their brief time making for a rather uneven group of films.) The jokes aren't bad and the film provides more than few laughs.

I like the film but I don't love it. Its a good little film that I don't think I would ever choose to watch it as a stand alone, but with as part of an evening a bunch of shorts its worth a shot.

With the bad press the MGM Our Gang shorts get (especially those which seek to teach a lesson), it's nice to see a short with one aim: fun!

And Farm Hands is rather fun, at least in parts.

The part where it's morning, and the rooster flies to an open window sill next to an alarm clock, and kicks the darned thing --- that was cute (though Froggy didn't have to explain the "joke").

The part where the chickens eat chicken feed mixed in with Mexican jumping beans, which causes them to hop up and down --- also amusing.

The part where Buckwheat tries to milk the cow by putting a couple of milk bottles underneath, and expecting the cow to milk itself -- a little funny.

The part where the kids fall into the hay-baler, causing them to come out of the shoot encased in blocks of hay --- an obvious gag, but still workable. Even funnier was when that crazy mule looked at them afterwards, and a question mark forms above its head (as if to say, "what the heck is that?!"! Now THAT cracks me up!

In sum, while the MGM shorts were on their last legs trying to keep the Our Gang series afloat, I must say I was mildly entertained by this short.

This M-G-M comedy short, Farm Hands, is the two hundred sixteenth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the one hundred twenty-eighth talkie. Mickey, Buckwheat, Froggy, and Happy are at Mickey's uncle's farm. When they get up in the morning, they do their chores. Buckwheat attempts to milk a cow. Mickey attempts to get water from a well. And Froggy attempts to ride a horse. Nice to have no lessons being taught here but there's not too many funny gags, either. I mean, Bucky trying to let the cow pour milk into some bottles and getting frustrated when he doesn't do it isn't funny at all. Mickey's just falling into a well would have been better done if some water was seen splashing out of it. I did like the gag of chickens going up and down after accidentally swallowing some of Froggy's jumping beans. And the undercranking concerning Froggy's riding on the "horse" was also amusing. So on that note, Farm Hands is worth a look at least.

This has to be one of my favorite later "Our Gangs," too.

To be sure, the funniest scenes are when: (1) the chickens swallow the jumping beans (how were they able to hop in the air like that?); (2) when Buckwheat thinks the cow can automatically put milk in the bottle and keeps waiting; (3) when Froggy rides the mule and thinks it's a horse (in fast motion) and then when the mule bucks Froggy off its back in slow motion; and (4) the hay-baler finale (I also thought it was funny when the mule saw each kid in a bale and the question mark was superimposed over its head).

Again, movie critics Leonard Maltin and Richard Bann's "dissing" of this short in their 1992 "Little Rascals" book only made watching "Farm Hands" even funnier; especially hilarious was when they claimed "(Director) Herbert Glazer (seemed to be) afraid of a little slapstick humor" and "(Glazer didn't want to) use the hay baler for an impossible but broadly funny kind of gag (but was) perfectly willing to use under-cranking to make the mule, and kids, run at double speed. This was MGM's idea of good clean comedy." Well, maybe it was, but in this case the comedy hit the bullseye!

The only debit, however, was when Mickey fell into the well. Indeed, that could've been made better by a splashing sound effect and water flying out of the well itself; that definitely *would* have added some comic punctuation.

One funny thought: When home computers were just starting to become popular in the mid-1990's, Apple, Dell, HP, or Gateway should have contracted with Ted Turner to use the last two scenes of "Farm Hands" for a commercial. When Mickey's uncle said, "Children! Come on back!," the last scene where the kids were running away in the hay bales could have been dubbed with them saying, "We'll send you an e-mail!," and maybe ending with a tag line saying "....it's better and faster than writing." So why didn't you think of that, Madison Avenue?

I'm glad Warner Home Video finally got this and the other MGM-produced "Our Gangs" (including the bad ones, alas) on DVD in their "Warner Archive" collection. The first chance I have a spare $40, I hope to purchase a copy (that'd mean I'd have to jump over the bad ones anyway; I asked Warner if it was possible to delete three shorts but they claimed it couldn't be done because "the masters are from original copies" (meaning, all 52 shorts were spliced together on one giant-sized reel? *BULL!*). Still, it would be worth it to see only the *good* shorts like this one).

I give "Farm Hands" an 8. Enjoy!