Dinky (1935) User Reviews (6)

Far from a great film, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 9 June 2010]

While I'll gladly admit that "Dinky" is a schmaltzy and clichéd film, I still liked it in spite of its shortcomings. I think it's the sort of film that fans of classic Hollywood would enjoy though the rest of the folks out there would probably be far less impressed. What impressed me? Well, for a movie with mostly child actors, the kids did a good job and the director got a lot out of their performances. In addition, the sentimentality of the film is high but not so high that the film suffers. When Dinky is sad, the audience feels sad as well--a sign that the pathos was done right.

The film begins with Dinky (Jackie Cooper) enrolled in a military school. Unlike many of the kids there, Dinky is a really nice kid--with no a sign of snobbery despite this being an elite school. Dinky is such a stand up guy that he's befriended the kids in the orphanage next door and looks after them as best he can.

It's good that Dinky is such a well-adjusted and decent kid because he's about to be sorely tested. His mother is unaware that she's been made the 'fall guy' for an unscrupulous boss and when his scheme to defraud the stockholders is discovered, he's gone and she is left holding the bag...and sentenced to prison for fraud. She keeps this from Dinky--telling him she's going to work in Chicago. But, one of the jerky kids at the school discovers her fate and does his best to make Dinky feel unwanted. In response, Dinky moves into the orphanage--after all, the kids there want him!! And, by the end of the film, he's organized the kids without folks to take on the academy's football team. Guess who wins! The film, as I said above, has very good acting for child actors. In addition, there are a lot of nice characters in the film, such as the junk dealer with a heart of gold. Not a great film, but you could certainly do worse!!

premise bugs me

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 6 August 2023]

Mrs. Martha Daniels (Mary Astor) gets framed by her boss for fraud and sent to prison for two years. She keeps it a secret from her son Dinky (Jackie Cooper) who is attending military school. When his secret comes out at school, he decides to run away. Then, it's his turn to hide the truth from his mother.

I appreciate what the premise is trying to do, but there is no way that Marsden would agree to this. It's more likely that Marsden takes the kid into his home. For sure, he would never hide it from his mother. Better still for the story, he could stay on the road as a runaway. I'm trying to stay with this story, but it keeps bugging me. I can't drop it.

This was a funny and Heartwarming tale.

[sara_lorayne · 15 September 2004]

I thought the acting was pretty good. Especially since it was mostly kids who were acting. I found them both believable and enthralling to watch. The football game between the orphanage and the academy was the highlight of the movie. The junk dealer was especially entertaining. I found this movie humorous and heartwarming. I hadn't seen any Jackie Cooper films, (other than Superman) before this one and I was impressed by his talent. He couldn't have been more than about 12-14 but his presence on the 'silver screen' was dominate nonetheless. He was a very likable character as Dinky Daniels and I look forward to watching some of his other earlier films in the future.

More sap than an orchard of pine trees.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 4 January 2019]

If it wasn't for the presence of Mary Astor in this overly sentimental drama, I would certainly ranked this as nearly a bomb. Jackie Cooper is sulking nearly as much as he was four years before in his much dated performance in "The Champ", and after one or two sulks, it becomes difficult to tolerate. I certainly have sympathy for the kids situation, dealing with a mother (Astor) who has been wrongly imprisoned for embezzlement and basically lying to her about his leaving military school to attend an orphanage school right next door. Attorney Roger Pryor aids him in the lie, we got a football with Cooper aiding the local orphan in raising money for football uniforms. The discovery of the location of the man who framed after give us hope that she will be released, just in time for the big game where Cooper ends up on the orphans team rather than the military schools.

The sentimentality of children's movies at the time could sometimes be rather grading for adults and today, they seem quite laughable. Even for those like me who prefer old movies, they are preposterous in story and often cell with overwrought cliches. I don't want I saw this on TCM more than a decade ago, and that time hasn't changed my opinion of this rather funny story that seems like something that Cooper would have been typecast at MGM, not really right for him at the rough and tough Warner Brothers. The characters are written as simply black and white with no grays, with the parents of students deliberately exposing Astor and making judgemental demands of the school administration. The fact that prior age Cooper in his deceit is also absurd.

Some of the character performances are decent, with Henry Armetta very funny as a junk dealer and James Burke touching as a friendly truck driver who gives Cooper a lift. At times, this seems like an "Our Gang" short mixed in with a Shirley Temple film which is inappropriate for the theme of this particular story. In place of Temple, there's Edith Fellows, a rising child star of the time who plays an orphan with a bit of a crush on Jackie. Fortunately, her scenes are brief otherwise this would even be more cloying than it is with the focus on Cooper. Fortunately, Astor pops up now and then to add some life to an otherwise forgettable soppy mess.

Jackie Cooper is such a doll

[HotToastyRag · 7/10 · 14 March 2019]

Jackie Cooper's pout is the cutest pout in the world, next to Shirley Temple's. If they'd ever made a movie together, the audience would be crying so hard they wouldn't be able to pay attention to the film. In Dinky, Jackie plays a young boy in military school whose mother, Mary Astor, gets sent to jail for a crime she didn't commit. While Mary tries to hide her location from her son, her son tries to hide his location from her. To help her expenses, Jackie leaves military school and enrolls in an orphanage school.

Sounds like the perfect makings for a tearjerker, and if you're a mother, you probably will reach for your handkerchief a time or two. It's not really as sad as it sounds, though, and most of the movie is enjoyable, since Jackie is such a doll and Mary is the stereotypical suffering mother. If you're a fan of his, or you've never seen one of his movies when he was a child star, you've got to watch it.

Scandal threatens to ruin everything

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 14 December 2022]

This is one of my favorite Warner Brothers' B films from the 1930s. Child star Jackie Cooper has been borrowed from MGM, and he's cast as a pre-teen enrolled at a military academy in San Diego. Though we are not told about a father, it seems as if he only has a mother (Mary Astor). She sent him to receive an education here, while she works as a vice president at a brokerage firm.

Typically, Cooper was cast with older male leads...character actors like Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore or Joseph Calleia. So it's nice to see him enact a story with just a mother figure, and the way he and Miss Astor bond on screen makes it very believable they'd be related, since they share great affection in their scenes.

Astor's character ends up going to prison, after she's been charged with fraud. Of course, we know that she's innocent and has been framed for illegal transactions by a male partner who skipped town. Since she cannot prove her innocence, she is convicted and sentenced to two years in a women's correctional facility upstate. Knowing she won't be able to visit her boy for the next twenty-four months, her lawyer (Roger Pryor) arranges to have her visit son Dinky (Cooper) one last time.

The lad is told that mother's going off to Chicago to open a new corporate branch. While she's away, the lawyer will visit Dinky when important school events occur. Dinky accepts the fact that he will be on his own for awhile, and the farewell scenes at the train station are poignantly played. We then see Astor arrive at the prison where she begins to serve her sentence, with the lawyer promising to try to overturn her conviction. He's in love with her and will move heaven and earth for her.

Back at the academy, one of the boys who dislikes Dinky finds a newspaper article reporting the trial and incarceration of Dinky's mother. When Dinky sees this, he is thrown for a loop. At first he cannot believe he's been lied to, and he refuses to accept the fact that his mother did anything wrong...no matter what the other kids say. Feeling persecuted because of this, he decides to run away.

There is a nifty subplot where rich boy Dinky has made friends with kids across the fence who belong to a nearby orphanage. Some of those boys are real pals to him, not the snobs he attends school with each day. Also, there is a cute little girl in the orphanage who has a crush on him, and Dinky seems to like her too. When the chips are down, and Dinky is going through emotional upheaval and an identity crisis, it is the kids from the orphanage who most support Dinky.

We know that everything will eventually turn out all right in the end. Dinky will learn some things about life and about himself while he runs away. At the same time, his mother will learn what is most important to her, before she is finally sprung from the slammer.

In real life, Mary Astor weathered many personal crises, including a notable scandal in the 1930s that saw her good name besmirched in the newspapers. She seems to bring something real to her portrayal here, and this is one of the reasons why I think so highly of this little 64-minute B film. It doesn't just feel like the actors are going through the motions, but they are growing as human beings while doing their jobs.