tavm Review of Alfalfa's Double

Alfalfa's Double (1940)

Alfalfa's Double starts out humorously enough but becomes painful real quick in this Our Gang entry

[3/10 · 18 January 2015]

This M-G-M comedy short, Alfalfa's Double, is the one hundred eighty-seventh entry in the "Our Gang" series and the ninety-ninth talkie. At the Greenpoint train station, Alfalfa just misses meeting his doppelganger Cornelius but the latter does see him at his yard he's supposed to clean. After a few pleasantries, they switch places for what seems a fun ride. Doesn't turn out that way...This short starts out amusingly enough with Alf's mannerisms playing as Corny as well as some undercranking when the rest of the gang helps cleaning up the yard but when Corny finds out he has no money after treating the gang for ice cream and the proprietor makes them do chores, it becomes painful real quick and stays that way afterwards. So on that note, I can't recommend Alfalfa's Double unless you're an OG completest like I am. P.S. There have been Our Gang/Little Rascals impostors over the years since so many real members have disappeared from the public view after their acting careers ended. But the most egregious seems to have involved a Southern minister who claimed to have been Alfalfa years after he died. A reader of the Maltin-Bann book about Our Gang confronted him with the truth but when this pastor took the tricked-up photo from this short, he claimed while Carl Switzer was the Alfalfa on the left, he was the one on the right! As the authors of that book said, "Pastor, that's preposterous."