User Reviews

I've seen several Mickey McGuire shorts and I must say that "Mickey's Big Game Hunt" is the most insanely written and unwholesome one yet! Imagine, not only is Mickey (as usual) smoking a stogie, but he also has a shotgun and he's NOT afraid to use it! Now considering these films are supposed to be kids' fare, like an Our Gang short, having Mickey blasting away with a shotgun is rather nutty!!

In this film, you have Mickey (Mickey Rooney), Mickey's brother (Billy Barty...who was actually 4, not a baby) and assorted friends. Much of the short is devoted to Mickey going on a hunting trip and using his friends along the way. But when adults dressed up as wild animals AND real escaped lions converge on the hunt, zaniness ensues.

This is just an okay short. I think it's because the competing Our Gang shorts were cute and idealized. But Mickey McGuire in this one is a little sociopath....not so cute and difficult to relate to as he blasts away at everything in his path!!

With black-polished eyebrows and blacked-out teeth, Mickey Rooney (in the distant days before he was Mickey Rooney) shows the kind of pugnacious energy that would keep him a star throughout the 1930s. The film is largely forgettable - little more than a thin copy of Roach's Little Rascal movies.

As I write this in 2007, Mickey is still chugging along. One new appearance is already on the books for him in the IMDb, in the 82nd year of his movie career, He played midgets in 1926, was MGM's biggest star in the late 1930s and is still chugging along. Bless him.

As to this short, it's nothing much: an attempt to compete with the enormous success of Hal Roach's OUR GANG series, using one of Fontaine Fox's comic strips (he was best known for the Toonerville Trolley, and, indeed, this one takes place among the youngsters of that megalopolis) that isn't very successful, because Mickey is about ninety per cent of the show and he's not good enough to carry a movie, even of this length, at this tender age. But bless him anyway.