Skippy

I didn't expect much from "Skippy." How substantial could a Depression-era movie based on a comic strip be? But I found myself really into this film. I watched it with my kids and we all really enjoyed it.

It's dated for sure, and the precocious antics of the child actors will likely grate on some. But I liked some of the cultural subtleties in this movie that I found parallels for in our current world. Like the hypocrisy found in Skippy's parents, affluent, casually prejudiced people who think poor, underprivileged folk are deserving of medical care (he's a doctor) but not of basic kindness and empathy (when Skippy wants to go to the "other side of the tracks" his mom asks him if he wants to grow up to be like "those" people). Or the tendency of Skippy's parents to underestimate the complexity of a child's world and who dismiss a child's problems because they're deemed less important than those of adults (not to a child, they're not).

Jackie Cooper is the rare child actor, especially from that time period, who's able to be truly winning instead of aggravating. He received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance, I believe the youngest actor to ever achieve that feat. The film was also nominated for Outstanding Production and Best Writing (Adaptation), while Norman Taurog won that year's Oscar for Best Director. I've read that he got Jackie Cooper to cry at key moments in the film by threatening to shoot his dog. What a guy.

Grade: A-