Three Smart Guys

Three Smart Guys has all the elements that ruined the Our Gang series at the hands of MGM, which had taken over production from Hal Roach in 1938 for the final 52 shorts. This stinkeroo boasts the inept acting "talents" of Billy "Froggy" Laughlin, Bobby "Mickey" Blake and the ever-annoying Janet Burston, an impossibly dull script from the poisoned pens of Hal Law and Robert A. McGowan and the nail-in-the-series' coffin: the dreaded lesson ("don't play hooky!"). Zzzzzzzzzz. Three Smart Guys is the antithesis of the earlier Hal Roach shorts, whose primary objective was laughs. Unfortunately for us, these bottom-of-the-barrel MGM shorts are what most people remember today when they think of Our Gang. There are perhaps 5 MGM incarnations really worth seeing, which judged against the likes of Three Smart Guys, appears to be pure dumb luck.