The first two Five Little Peppers movies were delights. "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew" and "The Five Little Peppers at Home" were lovely family films that made me smile. Oddly, however, the next (and final) two were rather poor by comparison...and you wonder how they lost the spark that made the other two so good. You can't blame it on time...all the films were made from 1939-1940. But the writing and casting really were disappointments. First, the best and most enjoyable actor in the first two films was Clarence Kolb who played Mr. King. Oddly, he was only in the third film for about 10 seconds and he was replaced by a different actor in the fourth. It wasn't because Kolb died...he actually lived to be about 90! Second, although the little girl who played Phronsie was very cute, over time the series tended to make the films more about her antics instead of Mr. King and the rest of the Peppers. The original series style definitely changed. Third, the writing really, really went downhill as the films progressed. In the third film, the nice Pepper kids suddenly were brats. Imagine a family with multiple Dennis the Menaces...that was the family in the third film...and up until then they were extremely sweet and decent. Well, here in the fourth the writing also was a mess and the nice, wholesome family was being broken up for no logical reason. So....five lovely kids who you grew to love in the first two films suddenly being told they were being sent off to boarding school!!! Huh???!!! Who thought this was a good idea?!
When the film starts, grouchy Aunt Martha (this time being played by a different actress) announces that she's going to try to take Jasper from the faux Mr. King because they are living with the Peppers in a rather conventional middle-class home. This made little sense...especially since Jasper looks to be about 14 and the courts almost certainly would have allowed him to choose where he wanted to live. But instead, Mr. King decides the best way to handle this is to send ALL the kids (not just Jasper) off to boarding schools to hide them from Aunt Martha. Does this make sense? Not in the least. What follows is the kids' transition to living in an institutional setting and the hope is that one day they'll return home. Unfortunately, all the kids in the school ostracize the Peppers as well as Jasper...and going home couldn't happen soon enough.
You'd think once they came up with a great formula, the studio would stick with it...but certainly not with this short-lived series. Tinkering with the basic structure of the family and putting them in contrived situations couldn't help but kill the series. And, sadly, with "Five Little Peppers in Trouble" clearly helped kill the series.
As a result of all the problems I mentioned above, this film was a huge disappointment and really frustrated me...and I am pretty sure this same frustration was felt by audiences. Also frustrating was the ending...which made you wonder if perhaps "Out West With the Peppers" was originally intended at the fourth film. If you see the two films, you'll probably notice what I mean.
