Skippy – 1930 / 1931
OK, where do I start with this one? This was a terrible movie that should never have been nominated for the Best Picture category. It was nothing more than a glorified episode of Our Gang that was dragged out to an hour and a half. It was stuffed full of annoying characters, bad acting, and an infantile plot. All this because it broke the cardinal rule of movie-making: Cute for the sake of cute is never cute. Never.
Let me set this up for you. Skippy is the character in a comic strip that was popular in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. I found it interesting to note that the Skippy comic strip was responsible for several merchandising campaigns, the most notable of which is Skippy peanut butter. They should have stuck with the peanut butter, and left Hollywood alone.
Jackie Cooper played the title role and it was almost embarrassing to watch. Cooper was dressed in a costume that was specific to the comic strip, but which looked ridiculous on a live boy. It consisted of a white shirt with a very tall collar, a polka-dot bow that resembled an ascot, a pair of shamefully short shorts and a coat that hung down to his thighs. The coat covered the shorts and gave the appearance that Skippy was wearing a little girl’s dress. Top it all off with a silly hat that looked like it belonged on an Italian organ grinder.
So, putting the lead actor’s farcical appearance aside, let’s look at a few more fatal flaws in this movie. Child actors that could not act were used to drive the plot. Cooper did alright with the script he was given, but there wasn’t a single other child who was not annoying enough to make me nauseous.
There was Skippy’s best friend Sooky, played by Robert Coogan, who said all his lines ridiculously slowly. He opened his mouth far too wide to over-enunciate and had an inflection that made him sound like he was reading his lines from a telephone book. There was the super annoying neighborhood girl, Eloise, played by Mitzi Green, who played the part of the village idiot. Every time she appeared on screen, she shouted a trademark, “Yodle-odle-odle-odle” to announce her presence. Eloise’s brother was the snooty know-it-all Sidney, played by Jackie Searl. I just wanted to slap the director, Norman Taurog for subjecting the public to this kind of annoying child behavior. And you could say, well, they are just kids behaving like kids, but you’d be wrong! This was a display of kids behaving like an adult’s stereotyped version of children.
And the adults were all stereotypes and caricatures as well. They had no depth, no personalities, and nothing to make them interesting in any way. The plot revolved around Skippy and his friend Sooky as they tried to raise the $3 to buy a license for Sooky’s dog. But in the end, they failed. The dog was caught by the dog pound and put down. Great! Now we have bad child actors balling and crying! As if the movie wasn’t already annoying enough!
There was a sub-plot of Skippy’s father, played by Willard Robinson, who was a city health inspector. He wanted to close down the dirty shantytown where Sooky and his mother lived. But in the end, when he sees his son in tears over the death of the dog, his hard heart softens. He not only keeps the shantytown open, he buys Skippy a new bicycle. Never-mind that the ungrateful Skippy thoughtlessly trades the new bicycle for Eloise’s dog to replace Sooky’s dead one.
As I mentioned earlier, the film was nothing more than a glorified episode of Our Gang or the Little Rascals. I’m sorry, but those shorts were never funny, never cute, never endearing, at least not for someone with my modern sensibilities. The problem I always had with them was that they had children acting like grown-ups. It puts me in mind of the modern idea that sexy children are just disturbing. Skippy wasn’t trying to be sexy, but you get the parallel.
Jackie Cooper was nominated for the Best Actor Award for his performance, making him, at 9 years old, the youngest person ever to be nominated for the award. I liked him so much better in The Champ. I honestly see no reason why this movie should have ever been nominated for Best Picture.