Big Business

Big Business (1924)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another decent Our Gang short from Hal Roach has the boys opening up a barber shop where they try to make some extra business but the only thing they get done is making people bald. The "plot" of the second portion deals with a rich kid (played by Mickey Daniels) whose mother treats him like a girl and makes him go around with a very bad hair cut. He eventually walks into the barber shop where the kids try to teach him how to be a real kid. If there's such a thing as beating a dead horse over and over and over again then this is the film because the same gags keeps getting repeated. The barber scenes basically has Joe cutting the hair off all the kids and of course the other kids get into the typical type of trouble that you'd expect. This includes Farina who has a pretty funny bit where he paints strips on a boy's legs to make it look like an outfit. Another funny gag has Mickey getting picked on due to his strange hair. What the gardener tells him is very simple but so funny. I think the film would have worked a lot better had it featured more of an imagination because it really gets held back by the same joke being done over and over. What's even stranger is that this short runs a few minutes longer than most in the series so a lot of editing would have done this one some good.