The Little Rascals (film)

The Little Rascals is a 1994 American family comedy film produced by Amblin Entertainment, and released by Universal Pictures on August 5, 1994. The film is an adaptation of Hal Roach's Our Gang, a series of short films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (many of which were broadcast on television as The Little Rascals) which centered on the adventures of a group of neighborhood children. The film, with a screenplay by Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur, and Penelope Spheeris – who also directed – presents several of the Our Gang characters in an updated setting, and features re-interpretations of several of the original shorts. It was the first collaboration by Guay and Mazur, whose subsequent comedies were Liar Liar and Heartbreakers.

A sequel, The Little Rascals Save the Day, was released as a direct-to-video feature in 2014.

Plot

Spanky (Travis Tedford) is the president of the "He-Man Woman Haters Club" with many school-aged boys from around the neighborhood as members. Spanky's best friend Alfalfa (Bug Hall) has been chosen to be the driver for the club's prize-winning go-kart, "The Blur", in the upcoming Soap Box Derby go-kart race. Unfortunately, Alfalfa is nowhere to be found.

The boys go to find Alfalfa and they discover him in the company of his sweetheart Darla (Brittany Ashton Holmes), with whom he is forbidden to be in love because she is a girl and that is against club rules. Alfalfa invites Darla on a picnic, and to prove his devotion to her, he agrees to have the picnic inside the Clubhouse. Unbeknownst to Alfalfa, his fellow club members find out about his plans.

At the picnic, Alfalfa and Darla think they are alone, but the other club members secretly pull several silly pranks to sabotage their romantic date. When they finally reveal themselves and demand to come inside the clubhouse, Alfalfa frantically tries to convince Darla to hide in the closet, which causes her to be offended. In the frenzy, a candle flame gets out of control, ultimately causing the clubhouse to burn down.

Darla, having been mistakenly led to believe Alfalfa feels ashamed of her, breaks up with him and turns her attentions toward Waldo (Blake McIver Ewing), the new kid in town whose father is an oil tycoon. Because Alfalfa burned down the clubhouse and also fraternized with a girl, Stymie (Kevin Jamal Woods) assigns him to guard the go-kart until the day of the race.

Alfalfa makes several attempts to woo back Darla, including sending her a fake love note. When that attempt fails, Spanky goes with him to formally break things off with Darla. They are initially turned from the door of her ballet school, but Spanky insists that they will wait for Darla to come out. He gives Alfalfa a frog to play with as they wait. They are soon spotted by the neighborhood bullies Butch (Sam Saletta) and Woim (Blake Jeremy Collins), who chase them inside the building. To get away, the boys duck into a door marked "Costume Room" and disguise themselves in ballet drag. They manage to evade the bullies, but when they attempt to enter another room to get out of their disguises (which are implied to be too tight and uncomfortable on their male anatomy), they are surprised to find the room filled with girls, including Darla, dressed in identical costumes. The boys nervously pretend to be in the ballet recital that is about to take place, but Alfalfa almost gives them away when the frog he is still holding in his hands croaks loudly (Spanky brushes it off by saying there's a frog in his throat). Alfalfa learns that Waldo is now Darla's boyfriend and that he is attending the recital that day, but that Darla still has feelings for him when he sings. Just as they are about to back out of the room, the ballet mistress enters and ushers them all on stage.

Spanky and Alfalfa are horrified to learn that they are in the middle of "Scenes from the Nutcracker." They begin awkwardly trying to dance along. Alfalfa attempts to hand the frog off to Spanky, but Spanky tell him to "Get rid of it" before depositing it into the front of Alfalfa's tights. Alfalfa immediately begins squirming in discomfort, and tries to catch the frog, now wriggling in and around his underwear, while still attempting to dance along. The recital quickly falls into chaos, and Alfalfa and Spanky run off of the stage. Alfalfa is glad to have finally caught the frog, but Spanky reminds him that frogs give warts and he rushes behind a curtain to rip off his ballet drag and dispose of the frog.

The ballet mistress, furious that they ruined her recital, confronts them, and upon seeing Alfalfa in his underwear, realizes that they are boys and throws them out immediately, Alfalfa in his underwear and Spanky still dressed as a girl. Butch and Woim are waiting for them outside the door, so Spanky distracts them while Alfalfa sneaks out. When Spanky loses his wig, the bullies give chase. Spanky manages to lose them, but they bump into Alfalfa, who is trying to run home in his underwear. They chase him into a mansion but are turned away by the butler. Alfalfa gets through and escapes out the back door, but is chased by a doberman. He jumps into a pool and swims across to escape. As he climbs out and rubs water from his face, he finds himself completely naked and sees his underwear floating in the pool.  As Alfalfa retrieves his underwear, he turns to see Darla and Waldo in a hot tub, laughing at him, to his embarrassment. The doberman then chases Alfalfa off the property.

At the carnival talent show the day before the race, Alfalfa once again tries to win Darla back, this time through song, being that Darla mentioned after she dumped him that the only thing she ever really missed about him was his voice. Waldo and Darla also entered the show in a duet. He talks to Alfalfa backstage saying he was amazing and Darla did okay. This angers Alfalfa, who believes Waldo does not truly appreciate Darla. He then requests the chance to perform for her and win her back. However, Waldo spoils Alfalfa's attempts to serenade her by putting soap in his drinking water, causing him the embarrassment of burping out bubbles all throughout his song.

The boys try to fund-raise $450, the cost of the lumber needed to rebuild their clubhouse. The youngest club members, Porky (Zachary Mabry) and Buckwheat (Ross Bagley), have unwittingly come up with $500, not realizing that their method for earning the money was not exactly honest. Their school teacher, Miss Crabtree, finds out about the scheme and confronts them, but Spanky convinces her to donate the money to be given as first prize in the go-kart derby.

As a result of Alfalfa's carelessness, "The Blur" is eventually stolen by Butch and Woim, so that now, in addition to having to rebuild the clubhouse, the boys need a new go-kart. They band together to build "Blur 2: The Sequel," and prior to race day, Spanky and Alfalfa (who previously had a falling out when the latter discovers the gang's "prank list" among the clubhouse ruins and confronts the former) reconcile their friendship and decide to ride in the two-seat go-kart together. They hope to win the prize money and the trophy, which is to be presented to the winners by A.J. Ferguson (Reba McEntire).

Butch and Woim make several sneaky attempts to stop Alfalfa and Spanky from winning the race. Waldo and Darla have also entered the go-kart race, but they eventually become annoyed with each other, and Waldo seemingly kicks Darla out from his car midway through the race. In a wild dash to the finish, and despite the many scrapes and crashes throughout the race, "The Blur 2" crosses the finish line ahead of the pack in a photo-finish between "The Blur" and "The Blur 2" literally by a hair, due to Alfalfa's pointy hairstyle. After the race, Butch and Woim are angry towards Alfalfa because he won the trophy and the prize money. They attempt to beat him up, but Alfalfa finally stands up for himself and punches Butch in the face, which somehow breaks a wooden fence, knocking him into a giant pool of pig poop. Woim then gets scared and jumps into the pig poop willingly to avoid being punched.

Along with first prize, Alfalfa also wins back Darla, after it is revealed that it had been Darla who had kicked Waldo out of their car and finished the race alone because she found out that Waldo was responsible for the bubbles at the talent show. Spanky, meanwhile, is shocked at the trophy presentation when he finally meets his favorite driver, A.J. Ferguson, who turns out to be female. Spanky confesses to Darla that he and the boys pulled the pranks on her at their picnic lunch, not Alfalfa. After the club house is rebuilt, the boys collectively have a change of heart towards membership and they decide to welcome Darla and friends as well as other girls into the club, adding a "Women Welcome" sign onto the front door.

Cast

• Travis Tedford as Spanky, the president of "He-Man Women Hater's Club" and Alfalfa's best friend
• Bug Hall as Alfalfa, Spanky's best friend and Darla's boyfriend
• Brittany Ashton Holmes as Darla, Alfalfa's girlfriend
• Kevin Jamal Woods as Stymie, the club's vice-president
• Jordan Warkol (voice dubbed by E.G. Daily) as Froggy, a club member with a croaking voice and a love for amphibians
• Zachary Mabry as Porky, one of the younger members of the club
• Ross Elliot Bagley as Buckwheat, another one of the younger members of the club and Porky's best friend
• Sam Saletta as Butch, the neighborhood bully
• Blake Jeremy Collins as Woim, Butch's friend and sidekick
• Blake McIver Ewing as Waldo, an obnoxious rich new kid who is very interested in Darla
• Courtland Mead as Uh-huh – club "typographer", always answers "uh-huh"
• Juliette Brewer as Mary Ann
• Heather Karasek as Jane
• Raven-Symoné as Stymie's girlfriend at the club
• Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as the twin girls at Darla's sleepover
• Mel Brooks as Mr. Welling, the bank teller
• Lea Thompson as Miss Roberts, Darla's ballet instructor
• Daryl Hannah as Miss Crabtree, the gang's schoolteacher
• Reba McEntire as A.J. Ferguson, "the best driver there is"
• Whoopi Goldberg as Buckwheat's mother
• Donald Trump as Waldo's father
• Eric Edwards as Spanky's father
• Dan Carton as Alfalfa's father
• George Wendt as Lumber store guy
• Alexandra Monroe King and Zoe Oakes as Darla's friends

Animals

• Petey, a neighborhood American Bulldog, possibly owned by Spanky
• Elmer, the pet White-throated Capuchin Monkey of a nameless club member
• Fifi, Waldo's pet Doberman Pinscher

Production

Bill Thomas, Jr., son of the late Bill Thomas, who played the original Buckwheat, contacted the studio and was invited down to visit the set, but got the impression that the filmmakers did not want him or any of the surviving original cast members involved in any production capacity. The surviving cast members saw this as especially hurtful, in light of the fact that director Penelope Spheeris had previously made a point of including Buddy Ebsen, from the original Beverly Hillbillies, in her 1993 feature film adaptation of that series. Eugene Jackson, who played the original Pineapple from the silent Our Gang comedies, and tried unsuccessfully to contact the studio to be a part of production, stated, "It's real cold. They have no respect for the old-timers. At least they could have recognized some of the living legends surviving from the first films." Filming took place from January 11, 1994 to April 6, 1994.

Release

Critical reception

The film received mostly positive critical reviews upon its original release; it currently holds a 25% "approval" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. the film had scored a 70% audience rating and Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a thumbs up.

Box office

The Little Rascals earned $10 million at the North American box office during its opening weekend. The film grossed a worldwide total of $67,308,282.

Repurposed scenes and situations

Many of the gags and subplots in the film were borrowed from the original Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts. These include:

• The scene in which Buckwheat and Porky are fishing and get their fishing lines tangled originates from a scene in the 1943 Our Gang short Three Smart Guys with Buckwheat, Froggy, and Mickey.
• The He-Man Woman Haters Club originally appeared in the 1937 Our Gang short Hearts are Thumps; the club would return in the short Mail and Female the same year. The plots for both shorts were reused for the film. In addition, the scene where the gang ruins Alfalfa and Darla's lunch date, as well as the scene where bubbles come out of Alfalfa's mouth while he sings, were borrowed gags from Hearts are Thumps. Alfalfa sending Buckwheat and Porky to deliver a love note to Darla was borrowed from Mail and Female.
• The "hi-sign" originally appeared in the 1935 Our Gang short Anniversary Trouble, and the animated 1979 special, The Little Rascals Christmas Special.
• The children dressing up as fire fighters and attempting to put out a fire appeared in the Our Gang shorts Fire Fighters (1922), The Fourth Alarm (1926), and Hook and Ladder (1932). The gag in which Spanky (Travis Tedford) winds up on a flying water hose was originally used with Farina in The Fourth Alarm.
• The gag involving Spanky and Stymie disguising as adults appeared in a handful of Our Gang shorts. Mickey Daniels and Johnny Downs attempted to dress up as Santa Claus with this gag in the 1926 short Good Cheer. Farina and Pleurisy tried this routine in the 1929 short Election Day. Stymie and Dickie Moore tried it in the 1933 short Fish Hooky, while Spanky and Alfalfa tried pulling it off in both the 1935 short Teacher's Beau and the 1936 short Two Too Young.
• The scene in which Spanky and Alfalfa accidentally find themselves performing in a ballet recital was inspired by the plot of the 1937 short Rushin' Ballet. The costumes that the duo wear are exact replicas of the costumes that the original Spanky and Alfalfa wore in Rushin' Ballet. The gag in which Alfalfa gets a frog loose in his clothes was originally used in the 1937 short Framing Youth, where Spanky was trying to convince him he had a frog in his throat.
• Alfalfa singing "The Barber of Seville" originated in Our Gang Follies of 1938.
• The idea of the children building their own vehicle out of junk and scrap metal had been used in several Our Gang shorts, most notably the 1934 short Hi'-Neighbor!. The gag in which the kids' car causes several adults to leap into the air was also borrowed from Hi'-Neighbor!, and also appears in One Wild Ride (1925), Free Wheeling (1932), and Divot Diggers (1936).
• Much of the Go-Cart race climax (including the gag in which the car belonging to Butch and Woim accidentally goes into reverse) was borrowed from the 1939 short Auto Antics. Material from Hi'-Neighbor and Three Men in a Tub (1938) is also present.