Three Smart Guys (1943) User Reviews

Dull, inept, lame short with Robert Blake as one of the boys...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 4 May 2009]

Boys who play hooky and go fishing are going to be sorry when they "don't catch all the big fish" later on in life. So they're told by a wise old fisherman when they take time off to go down to the local pier to fish.

BOBBY BLAKE is so young, he's barely recognizable as the boy who turned into ROBERT BLAKE as an adult. "Buckwheat" is supposed to provide some laughs and a boy with a foghorn voice is barely understandable. It's supposed to be hilariously funny, but misses the mark in a big way.

At least the Hal Roach comedies had talented little actors doing their thing. Blake doesn't do badly, but all the other players are enough to make you cringe.

Where's a bloody horses head when you need one?

[max von meyerling · 3/10 · 5 May 2009]

I have to agree with most of the negative comments here. This was so bad, just dreadful. Its obvious that MGM stayed in the Our Gang business just so the hypocrites who ran MGM could point to the moral, family type entertainment they manufactured. This is just the type of heavy- handed crap that children have naturally rejected for generations. There were no real kid stars in these films which shrank from two reels (20 min.) to less than a reel. Three peripheral types are in the lead. Production values are non-existent with a standing residential front making do as a school. Imagine a school with one wooden door. Did you go to a school like that? Even in those days there were laws, except for, I guess the meanest one room schoolhouse. Which this isn't. Just the slamming home of the message- kids please stay in school if you want to get ahead in life. In other words: Shut up and do as we tell you. So this is just more propaganda. Of course the witless and artless delivery of the message certainly meant that it was ignored by the children. Hey, how did it effect Bobby Blake? But not by the adults who slapped each other on the back to congratulate themselves on their good works and a job well done.Back to making the real dough with Lana's tits.

One of the worst of the MGM Our Gang films

[dbborroughs · 2/10 · 14 November 2009]

In an effort to go fishing Froggy hatches a plan to get himself, Mickey and Buckwheat tossed from school by acting out pits of Dynamo Dick comics. They end up punished and having to write on the blackboard. Eventually they do go fishing and beyond cliché fishing antics occur.

Terrible film marks the beginning of the death knell for the Our Gang series. Effectively the gang has been reduced to three, which wouldn't be bad but two of the three are the weakest of the Our Gang leads (Froggy and Mickey). For me this film is painful viewing. Its not only badly done, its well worn material that should be easy to craft into something good badly done. Its terrible and makes it clear why only three more shorts were produced after this one

Poor Our Gang

[Michael_Elliott · 13 May 2009]

Three Smart Guys (1942)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely poor Our Gang short from MGM has Froggy, Mickey and Buckwheat skipping school so that they can go fishing but they meet an older man who convinces them that school isn't too bad. I'm really not sure how many, if any, of these MGM/Our Gang shorts I've seen but I really hope this is the worst of the bunch. The biggest issue is that there isn't a single laugh to be found but the strange thing is that it appears no laughs were even attempted to be gained. There's really nothing here that was meant to be funny and just turned out dull. Everything is pretty much straight-forward and I personally can't see any attempt at being funny. Another problem is that the message of not skipping school is so over-dramatic that you can't help but just role your eyes.

A dull triple threat!

[jbacks3 · 1/10 · 29 December 2004]

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.

Three Smart Guys is yet another awful educational Our Gang short

[tavm · 2/10 · 2 February 2015]

This M-G-M comedy short, Three Smart Guys, is the two hundred eighteenth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the one hundred thirtieth talkie. Froggy tells Mickey and Buckwheat of his plans to get expelled from class by reading aloud from his favorite comic book, Dynamo Dick, which his friends agree to. The teacher initially does this, then has them write on the chalkboard promising not to do it again. The next day, however, they play hooky...There's a few nice gags: Froggy puts three chalks on the eraser saving time in writing the same thing over again, him and Buckwheat accidentally catch each other's lines causing one of them to fall over, and...actually, I think that was it. Unfortunately, an elderly fisherman is there and he tells them-after Buckwheat inadvertently reveals the skipping school part-how important school is in catching the big fish-success. Ugh, well this is the opposite of previous Hal Roach entries when young Mickey Daniels was allowed to say he wishes school was burned (never mind that his character grew up to become a truant officer who at least didn't make heavy handed points about education in the much better Fish Hooky). Add the very contrived script and the unconvincing performances and you have another of the nearly very worst shorts in the series. So on that note, Three Smart Guys is definitely not recommended. P.S. This was Edward Cahn's last short in the series. He'd go on to make features of varying quality until he died on August 25, 1963.

well, there is much attempt at humor, however lame

[marjcbs · 13 October 2004]

I don't know, I guess some jokes which sound good just don't end up looking all that funny on-screen.

Take the scene where Mickey, Froggy, and Buckwheat try to get kicked out of class by disrupting the teacher's lesson with a spontaneous Dynamo Dick comic book recitation. Sounds amusing, but....

When they're punished by having to write "I will be a good pupil" 100 times on the board, Froggy gets an idea: he wedges 5 chalks in an eraser to expedite the process. Again, funny on paper, but rather obvious in the viewing stage.

During the fishing scene, the writers of this film try their darnedest to be funny. Buckwheat asks Froggy why he included a toy mouse in his bait. "To catch catfish," Froggy replies. As Froggy shows his pals how an "expert" casts, he catches the backseat of his pants (Ouch!) That was one of the few fairly funny gags.

Other gags would have been funny if they made a little more sense. When Mickey catches a pail during an overhead cast, it sends him flying to the edge of the pier (gee, what a light kid Mickey must be!). He yells for help at that point (he's still on the pier, and not even close to falling in the water...what is he yelling "help" for??) At one point Buckwheat falls into the water, as do the rest of the gang at some point. It turns out the water is very shallow, yet they all yell "help!" (huh?)

The best joke is where Buckwheat and Froggy are fishing on either side of the pier, and their hooks get caught on each other in the water. This causes Froggy and Buckwheat to literally pull each other back and forth while commenting on how strong their fish must be. Now, THAT was well-done!

And then, of course, there just HAS to be an adult (the "wise old fisherman") to teach the kids a lesson about truancy from school, studying hard, bla bla bla. This had been done before in previous Our Gang shorts (such as "Robot Wrecks" and "Good Bad Boys").

Ah, for the good OL' days of Hal Roach!

Oh, well.