Fast Company

According to IMDB, "Fast Company" was a film where part of it was made....the film was then shelved...and then it was resurrected and finished about a year later. Well, after seeing it, I can see that this was the case as the film is rather disjoint.

Mickey is out delivering eggs for his father using his goat-drawn cart. He meets a rich kid near the train station and the rich kid is bored and wants to play and be a normal kid. Mickey likes the idea of switching places, as it means staying at a hotel until the rich kid's parents show. Soon, the rest of the Gang arrives at the hotel and all sorts of chaos ensues...including the goat and a monkey running amok through the lobby.

The film switches, oddly, from the hotel to a restaurant within the hotel and the kids are suddenly dressed up as some sorts of savages. There's no transition and why they are dressed this way is never explained....and this seems pretty clearly to have been filmed at a later time.

The movie has its moments but it also seemed a bit more disjoint and confusing. It also features the gang as they were in their early silents...more destructive and jerk-like than the 'nice' Our Gang films of the sound era. Overall, worth seeing but a relatively weak short for this comedy group.

By the way, the funniest bit in the film was also the most inappropriate....more inappropriate than the kids smoking. The beginning features Joe Cobb's parents beating each other up and although I know it's not funny, they did it in a way that did, I am ashamed to say, make me chuckle.