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She also establishes great sympatico with this young cast. Penelope Spheeris is a comedy talent, as she showed in films like the first "Wayne's World" and the "Decline of Western Civilization" documentaries. ![]() ![]() Depressing as it sounds, it looks as if the moviemakers were trying to make something about as good as a typical mid-'30s "Our Gang" short (only longer)-and thought their project was justified because it offered strong role models for 5-year-old girls. The filmmakers don't do much with the feminism either, besides staging a boy-hating, girl-hating ensemble song and foisting on Alfalfa some satiric "sensitive man" lines that might have gagged Alan Alda. Yet the new "Little Rascals," though it has a Stymie and a Buckwheat, doesn't do anything funny, surprising or fresh with the gang's multi-racial makeup. It was the same dopey humor used on everyone else. And though there were racist gags in the movies, they weren't mean. Black child actors Allen "Farina" Hoskins, Matthew "Stymie" Beard and Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas were all a part of the group, and their camaraderie with their white buddies was presented as unremarkable-not surprising perhaps, since some of the great childhood literary heroes of the period (Huck Finn, Penrod and Sam) all had pals of color, as well. Part of what keeps people interested in the pictures today-perhaps one reason for this pointless movie-is the fact that the gang was integrated. ![]() But what about their clothes? Or Alfalfa's cowlick? The moviemakers have actually succeeded in their toughest task: They've found plausible substitutes for boss Spanky (5-year-old Travis Tedford), poseur Alfalfa (9-year-old Bug Hall), belle Darla (5-year-old Brittany Ashton Holmes), Stymie (7-year-old Kevin Jamal Woods), Porky (4-year-old Zachary Mabry), Buckwheat (5-year-old Ross Elliot Bagley) and deep-voiced Froggy (7-year-old Jordan Warkol)-as well as bullies Butch (9-year-old Sam Saletta) and Woim (8-year-old Blake Jeremy Collins) and snobby rich kid Waldo (9-year-old Blake McIver Ewing, most talented of the troupe) along with two Darla chums, Heather Karasek, 5, and Juliette Brewer, 7 Petey the bull's eye dog and Uh-Huh (Courtland Mead)-whom I don't recall. What's its point? The boy Rascals-who for some inexplicable reason are dressed in exact replicas of the outfits of their '30s counterparts-are taught that their "He-man woman-hating" ways are a relic of a vanished era. In fact, adults concocted this whole would-be feminist fable.
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