Family Troubles

You've got to hand it to Our Gang. It began way back sometime in the late summer of 1922 and was carefully nurtured by Hal Roach and, in the best entries, his ace-kid's director Bob McGowan. Somewhere in the mid-30's Roach said he saw the writing on the wall for shorts (prematurely, in my opinion) and sold off the Our Gang series to his distributor, MGM. Trouble was, the mega-studio had no clue on how to handle comedy or the inclination to give the series the special attention it needed to thrive. All MGM could successfully do with it toward the end was shove the increasingly--- often painfully--- unfunny horts down the throats of their parent Loew's theater chain. Family Troubles is just about as bad as Our Gang could get with it's anemic 'the grass isn't always greener' plot. It's one of MGM's attempts at teaching a lesson--- a plot device avoided like the plague by Roach & Co. It ranks with Robot Wrecks as the bottom of the Our Gang barrel. Unfortunately, there would be 8 more shorts to follow before the series was quietly killed off. (No stars!)

I propose that the writers of "Family Troubles" held the following brainstorming session regarding the so-called comic potential for the story ---

Writer #1: "Tell me what you guys think of this: we start off the film with Janet drowning in tears because she feels her family doesn't love her anymore."

Other writers: "HEY, THAT'S FUNNY! HO HO HO HA HA HA! WHAT A BEGINNING!"

Writer #2: "OK, if you think THAT'S funny, how's this: the Gang tries to to get an elderly couple to adopt Janet, and this couple tries to teach Janet a lesson by making her life twice as miserable!"

Other Writers: "HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HAW HAW HAW HAW! WHERE DO YOU GUYS COME UP WITH THIS? WHAT A RIOT!"

Writer #3: "Oh, this will be surpass even that -- at the end of the movie, Froggy happily says: 'All's well that ends well, I always say.' Then Janet's father corrects him: 'Froggy, Shakespeare said that.' 'He did?? Shucks!' yells Froggy.

Other writers: "OH, MY STOMACH! WOO HOO HAA HAA WAA HAA HAA! WE SHOULD ALL GET A RAISE, WE'RE SO DARNED FUNNY!"

And that, my friends, is how "funny" this movie is.