A Lad an' a Lamp

An odd and interesting Our Gang/Little Rascals flick, this is indeed filled with some undertones of racial stereotyping. But much of that will go over the heads of the modern kids who see this.

Essentially, the Gang reads "Aladdin's Lamp" and get the idea to rub all the lamps they could find hoping for a genie to appear to grant their wishes. As mentioned, Stymie, the Black hero of the early 1930s episodes, wishes for a watermelon and for his "pappy to get out of jail" (this running "gag" from the Stymie Beard years is even less funny today than it was in 1932 for obvious reasons). For some reason, Spanky wishes for Stymie's brother Cotton to turn into a monkey. With the help of a practical-joking magician and his smoke pellets, Cotton appears to do just that to Stymie's horror! To make matters worse, Dickie and the rest of the gang consider selling Cotton to the circus! Adults will have a coronary over the racial implications of all this, and another racial gag involving a Black cook trying to woo his girlfriend, who abscond in histrionic hysterics when the monkey shows up. However, modern children who are innocent of the baggage of stereotype implications will just see this as amusing and wonder how the Gang could be so foolish as to think that Cotton turned into a monkey.

Kids will enjoy other aspects of the film, especially when a bully (Donald Haines) bothers the kids and the magician (who is watching all this nearby) drops a smoke pellet, appears, and yells, "Be gone, villain!" while Donald does just that. This will appeal to the imagination of the small set. In a sense, this will play better to children than adults.