Five Little Peppers at Home

Five Little Peppers at Home (1940)

** (out of 4)

Decent second film in the Columbia series picks up shortly after the previous film. This time out the Peppers and the Kings are living together but soon its discovered that the King family is on the verge of bankruptcy and might have to sell the copper mine. FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AT HOME isn't nearly as cute and charming as the first film but I think those who enjoyed the original should at least be somewhat entertained by this sequel. I really liked the fact that this film pretty much picks up right after the original and it was also very good that the majority of the cast came back. This includes Edith Fellows playing the main Peppers girl and Clarence Kolb who plays the grandfather King. Both of them offer up good performances and help keep the film moving at a nice pace. The supporting players are also good in their roles, although I must admit that Dorothy Ann Seese's character, the youngest kid, is being forced to be too cute and it has a few annoying spots. The biggest problem with this sequel is simply that a lot of the charm is now missing and its been replaced with a pretty bland story about going broke. As you'd expect, there's a lot of talk about the values of being poor but I'm not sure how many people would agree with this. Still, this is a fairly simple movie and fans of the first will still want to check it out.