Boxing Gloves (1929) User Reviews (13)

Entertaining 'Hevvywate Bowt'

[ccthemovieman-1 · 8/10 · 16 May 2010]

Sometimes I am shocked how bad (i.e. "Harry, Joe, Wheezer") or how good (i.e. "Farina, Chubby, etc.") some of these young kids are in the acting department. In these early Our Gang shorts, a few got a little famous, though, and no more more than the kid who makes his debut here in a cameo role: Jackie Cooper.

Cooper plays a paying customer to a fight being promoted by Farina and Harry with the boxers being Wheezer and Beezer - two little guys who have no clue what do to in the ring and don't have their heart into it anyway. When Cooper demands his "money" back, Farina asks, "Whad'ya expect? Jack Dempsey and Benny Leonard?" In the next Our Gang short, Cooper is part of the group but I don't think they explained how that happened.

Anyway, the promoters - speaking of Dempsey - need some heavyweight boxers to draw a crowd, so they get Chubby and Joe after Farina spot the two fighting over a girl. He puts their temporary animosity to good (and funny) use! The boxing match between the two heavy kids takes up almost the entire second half of the film is pretty comical. Check out the misspelled signs, too, which are cute.

The odd thing is that the sound goes off a number of times when the camera pans back for a crowd shot. Only the closeups then does the sound return. Since this was 1929 and the beginning of "talkies," crowd noise was obviously too difficult to handle here.

Still, the short provides a number of good slapstick comedy scenes, something you always got with old-time comedies featuring boxing.

Don't be distracted by the sound or lack thereof

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 8 January 2011]

Our Gang made a very easy transition from silent to sound in 1929 with some of their best shorts being made in the early sound era. Our Gang made its "all-talking" debut in April 1929 with the three-reel "Small Talk". Note that this is before many of the larger studios went to sound, and yet the children are much more natural in their performances than their adult counterparts. That's because the theory behind Our Gang from the start was for the children to behave as naturally as possible.

The acting by these kids is terrific, but this is what is known as a part talkie, and if you don't know that you'll keep playing with the sound thinking something is wrong. It is not. Here the Gang goes outdoors for a boxing match between two rivals, and outdoors was a place early sound equipment could not easily follow. Thus when there are close ups of just a few kids talking, even outside, you have true synchronized sound. Sound effects are added at certain other points outside to give the illusion of truly synchronized sound. However, for the long shots of the boxing match itself with a crowd of the kids making noise, these scenes are silent film with no crowd sounds even dubbed over.

Realize this and just sit back and enjoy the short and I think you'll like it.

Semi-Silent Short

[dc1-1 · 8/10 · 2 January 2003]

Another reviewer indicated that this was a curiosity, and it sure was! When I first watched "Boxing Gloves," I turned the sound way up on the tv, thinking that there might be something wrong with the soundtrack. The large stretches without sound during what surely would have been very noisy sequences are very unsettling...some clever director should make use of this technique! A very entertaining episode.

Funny

[Michael_Elliott · 4 November 2008]

Boxing Gloves (1929)

*** (out of 4)

Fat Joe and Chubby agree not to fight over girls and that promise lasts a few seconds until one walks by wanting a soda. Farina sees them fighting and decides to put them in his boxing ring in order to make some money. This is the first of the sound Our Gang shorts that I really liked and this one here benefits from a nice screenplay as well as better technical qualities. It seems the quality of this early sound features finally went over well as there aren't any annoying glitches or performances due to the new technology and this makes for a more pleasant film. The screenplay here also has a narrative for the first time out of the first four shorts and it's a very good one. We get all sorts of nice and funny action with the two fat kids running around having their pants ripped and fighting. The boxing match contains plenty of laughs as the two kids think the other is going to fall down in the second round but the thing just keeps going. Jackie Cooper makes his first appearance here.

Not one of the best

[robert-temple-1 · 6/10 · 15 August 2017]

This is the fourth Little Rascals sound film. It is very short, at only 17 minutes. Unfortunately, about half the sound track is missing, so that as the film is cut, we go from sound scenes to silent scenes and back and forth like that. Farina is trying to make some money out of staging a boxing match for which he can charge admission. Farina sees Joe and Chubby fighting rather feebly over a girl and decides that they would be good in the ring. The only problem is that 'Joe doesn't get mad and Chubby is scared', so something must be done to get them fighting properly. They agree to go into the ring. But Farina has discovered a secret about Joe which is that Joe is very vain about his hair, which must always be neatly combed. As Joe says: 'There ain't nothing that gets be madder than havin' my hair mussed.' So as the fight proceeds, Farina arranges for Joe to get his hair mussed up, which drive him wild and a savage fight then takes place. Although they wear heavily padded gloves, the kids are doing their own fighting and they whack each other with terrible force over and over again, and nowadays nothing like that would be allowed. But it was 1929 and 'everything goes'. At one point they knock each other out simultaneously. During all of this, Mary Ann keeps trying to sneak in to see the fight and being thrown out, but disguises herself as a boy and even wears a false moustache at one point. She ends up being able to see the fight, and Pete the Dog does as well. (He looks really interested in it.) Some of the regulars do not appear in this film, and a large extra cast of boys appears in the film as the audience and as troublemakers because they are older. All the long shots of the roaring audience of boys have lost their sound. The directorial credit for this film says it was directed by Anthony Mack 'under the supervision of Robert A. McGowan', but as IMDb makes clear, Anthony Mack was a pseudonym for McGowan for numerous Little Rascals films. I must confess myself puzzled as to why it was necessary for McGowan to pretend to be somebody else under the supervision of himself. Perhaps someone cleverer than myself knows the answer to this mystery. This is a rather disappointing Little Rascals film, and seems a bit half-hearted.

Boxing Gloves is most notable as the Our Gang debut of Jackie Cooper

[tavm · 6/10 · 9 October 2014]

This Hal Roach comedy short, Boxing Gloves, is the ninety-first in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the third talkie. A partial remake of the silent The Champeen, this one has Joe and Chubby fighting over Jean when she asks for a soda pop which gives Farina an idea to put them in the boxing ring. I'll stop there and just say that while the beginning with the repeat of the soda pop running back and forth gag from the previous short I mentioned was again handled well, the boxing scenes aren't as funny especially when those scenes are absent of any crowd noise since this was a part talkie at best. I guess some of the technical problems of doing sound pictures hadn't been ironed out yet. Of note is the fact this marked the first series appearance of one Jackie Coooper who's at the beginning demanding his money back because of the initial fight between toddler Wheezer and another one his age which is lackluster. Jackie will eventually take the leading role in the gang. Directed by Anthony Mack, Robert McGowan's nephew. On that note, Boxing Gloves is still worth a look for any Our Gang completists out there.

Entertaining but curious "Our Gang" early talkie

[jimtinder · 8/10 · 10 February 2001]

"Boxing Gloves" was the third "Our Gang" talkie filmed, but the fourth to be released (following "Lazy Days.") The film marks the debut of Jackie Cooper in the Gang.

Farina and Harry are boxing promoters who have to result to promoting a fight between preschoolers Wheezer and Beezer to fill the card. While they would love to book a match between heavyweights Joe and Chubby, they've been pals for years. Farina and Harry convince the duo to fight, with very funny results.

"Boxing Gloves" is fun to watch, but it is a curiosity. The film, although billed as "All-Talking," is actually part silent/part talkie. There are long gaps during the the heavyweight fight that are entirely silent. Why the director filmed it this way is unknown. One idea I have for why this may have occurred is that sound equipment was extremely sensitive at this time, and the fear could have been that crowd noise could have damaged the equipment. It does seem that when the crowd is at their noisiest, the mikes go silent, so this well could have been the reason.

"Boxing Gloves" is fun, however, and enjoyable to watch. This was the earliest talkie syndicated by King World when "The Little Rascals" came to TV. 6 out of 10.

Two big beanie babies.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 13 November 2019]

Joe Cobb is getting ready to pass the baton of resident "Our Gang" onto Norman "Chubby" Chaney, here fighting over pretty Jean Darling (the Darla of their time), and after a battle of ripping each other's pants and running to be the first one to get her a raspberry pop. Mary Ann gets to show her rascally pickle pussed personality, mussing Joe's hair, the only thing that makes him mad, and disguising herself as a man to get into the club where Joe and Chubby prepare to duke it out. Of course, their weight becomes a subject of several visual fat jokes, reminding us how thin Spanky was compared to them. Their fight is closer to dancing around each other and scream back and forth, "Why don't you lay down?" It's apparent by long periods of no sound (other than generic soundtrack noise) that the sound people and editors weren't 100% prepared for the transition from silents. Still, there's plenty of comedy, as well as the memory of seeing this when I was a kid and remembering each and every detail.

Serviceable Early Our Gang Short

[Corr28 · 6/10 · 11 April 2009]

This is a fairly entertaining early sound Our Gang short. Both Joe and Chubby are easy to like in this one, as is the underrated and under appreciated Farina. Joe's face of anger as his hair gets messed up is priceless. The actual boxing sequence between the two "heavyweights" does contain a few nice chuckles. The film is more a sound "hybrid" as opposed to a full all-talking short. This is what hurts the film in the end. The audio track shows the ravages of time and there are long segments of complete silence that hampers the overall effect. Still, it's hard to find real fault with this or any of the Our Gang series but when stacked up against other shorts from the series, it's serviceable at best.

Rocky transition, forgettable comedy

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 21 March 2017]

"Boxing Gloves" is another Rascals short film and this one is from 1929, so almost 90 years old. Watching it makes really clear how they were on the transition from silent to sound films at that era and you can definitely make an argument for the kids from Our Gang being the first sound film stars in that new era, especially if you are only talking about short film. This one here is of course also in black-and-white. This is one of the rare Rascals movies when grown-ups are totally nonexistent: no crooks, no teachers, no parents - just the kids. Two chubby rascals go up against each other in the boxing ring, so if McGowan and Walker take on the subject of boxing here, you can see how popular a sport it already was a decade ago. Actually there are many silent short films from earlier even that deal with boxing. Anyway, another interesting aspect here is how one of the two boxer child actors went on to have a long life after his career ended, but the other died really soon an untimely death. The "love interest" only died very recently here. As for the film itself, I think it is weaker than most other Rascals films and I only recommend it to the biggest fans of the series, especially if they also care for boxing. At slightly under 18 minutes this is one of the longer Rascals films, but not the longest. I found it relatively forgettable. Thumbs down.

In the 1900s they used to sell tickets to Pre-arranged train wrecks . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 6/10 · 28 November 2017]

. . . but if THAT was out of your price range, you could always see a deplorable import about Canadiyapper Juvenile Delinquents for a nickel. Speaking of wood, BOXING GLOVES features precocious tyke "Jean" railing against her pair of geriatric suitors, twice complaining "How do you expect me to drink this with the cap on?" (An equally explicit scene occurs a few minutes later, when a mustached "Mary" poses the question of whether she's Transvestite, Transgender, or merely a "Q.") But the real meat of BOXING GLOVES concerns Jean's would-be beaus--"Joe" and "Chubby"--each suffering at least two concussions in the span of about five minutes. This turn of events cleverly illustrates why Canadia has never produced an Einstein (or even a Trump). From Infancy, Canadiayapper kids are taught to beat each other's brains out, whether via ice hockey, Canadiayapper Football (in which the first team to 21 concussions wins), bare-knuckle MMA, kick-boxing with ice skates, facial biting bouts, tackle skiing, curling, an so forth. After witnessing BOXING GLOVES, you'll better understand how Canadia produced the lamest "Super Hero" ever (THE GREEN LANTERN).

Amazingly dull for a boxing film.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 6 November 2011]

Farina and his partner have started a backyard boxing business, but they can't sell any tickets because they only have babies like Wheezer doing the fighting. So, when they see Joe and Chubby about to have a fight, they take full advantage of this and encourage them to duke it out in their boxing ring. The problem is that Joe and Chubby aren't very tough kids and don't seem to want to fight. And, during the fight they keep avoiding each other--Chubby is afraid and Joe doesn't feel mad enough to fight. Eventually, though, they get the hang of it--thanks to Joe having his hair mussed.

While you won't notice at first that it's one of the Gang's earliest sound films, it becomes apparent during the fight when the sound cuts out for a bit--and it's pretty obvious. It also represents the first appearance in these films by Jackie Cooper--though his part is rather small. As far as the quality of the film goes, it's amazingly limp considering the subject matter. There's barely a laugh and it's certainly not among the better films of this series.

Entertaining and Funny

[Derek03 · 22 August 2003]

This is one of my favorites!Very funny.Joe and Chubby are at odds over the lovely Jean.They won't fight because:Joe can't get mad enough,and Chubby is a scared!Of course fight promoter Farina convinces each one that the other will throw the fight! At that time women weren't allowed at boxing matches,so poor Mary Ann is refused admittance and resorts to a few failed attempts,before finally sneaking in.I read that this was Jackie Cooper's debut with the gang,and it was an auspicious one.His big contribution was to be dragged from ringside by Mary Ann,only to have her take his place dressed in his clothes! Still it's entertaining and the fight scenes are very funny!