Not bad
It’s hard to know what to say about “Little Rascals” as a movie. As an ode to childhood innocence, this 90’s transplanting of the “Our Gang” crew by “Wayne’s World” director Penelope Spheeris ain’t half bad. She keeps the mischief up and gets performances from kid actors that come across like actual kid behavior.
The plot ain’t much- basically Spanky (Travis Tedford) and other male members of the He-man Wuman Hater’s Club get worked up into a tizzy when another one of their founding members, Alfalfa (Bug Hall), falls in love with the far more mature for her age Darla (Brittany Ashton Holmes).
Being so against girls that the boys already know to whip out a lizard or try to crush them if they happen to fall out a window, the guys decide to put the kibosh on the relationship. One picnic scene in the cabin involving a whoopee cushion, spoiled grape juice, and kitty litter is funnier than it has a right to be. So is one later where Alfalfa and Spanky dress up like ballerinas to try and see Darla, only to completely tank her recital.
Spheeris gets pretty good mileage out of girls vs. boys- letting both the He-Man’s and Darla’s sleepover crew unload on the other gender for all their grossness in two conflicting scenes midway through and I dug the “Kid’s Say The Darndest Things” angle here- where the kids obviously are repeating stuff they’ve heard adults say. If these kids ever studied acting before, you could have fooled me. Most of them rely on general cuteness, mugging for the camera while they say these lines. The kid who plays Buckwheat (Ross Bagley) especially goes all in; the little ditties he comes up with are hilarious. Hall gets the bulk of the slapstick and he has a knack for reacting to all the humiliations poor Alfalfa gets socked with.
The whole thing feels like a collection of parts though- there are a handful of funny scenes, a bunch of cameos that also jive with the film’s general cuteness, and Spheeris ends it all with a big boxcar road race where lessons are learned. If you’re grown up passed the point of saying “ewww” at the mention of girls or boys, it probably won’t enthrall you but it does feel like a mostly heartfelt, occasionally very funny look back at childhood. No one will accuse it of being great but as enjoyable entertainment, it sneaks out just by a hair. An Alfalfa cowlick to be exact.