Absolutely brilliant

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This M-G-M comedy short, Robot Wrecks, is the two hundred first entry in the "Our Gang" series and the one hundred thirteenth talkie. After the gang watch a robot demonstrate doing work at a store display, they decide to make their own to do the same thing. It doesn't work, however, and Slicker cons them by selling them some "invisible rays". The robot does do what it's ordered to do but only because Boxcar is in it, unbeknownst to the gang. Okay, while this was another "let's-teach-the-kids-a-lesson" ep of OG, I found much of it pretty funny like when Spanky raises his voice when the robot doesn't reply right away to his question or when the camera is undercranked when the robot goes "haywire". Also, Billy Bletcher not only reprises his role as Froggy's father, he also does the masculine voice of the mother as well! So on that note, Robot Wrecks is at the least worth a look.

Robot Wrecks should have been a great Our Gang entry--- the basic idea of building kid's robot slave in the days soon after the World of Tomorrow sounds pretty cool. Alas, sounds can be deceiving. Robot Wrecks blows the premise by bastardizing the robot by stuffing it with Billy Ray "Boxcar" Smith and allegedly fueling it with "invisible rays" and then selling it to one of their usual foes, Freddie "Slicker" Walburn (who's atypically gullible here). Voices are obviously dubbed, the acting is excruciating to watch and the only remotely funny aspect is that the writers could get even kids to recite the dialog (blame Hal Law and Robert A. McGowan). Sadly, future MGM Our Gangs would rival this deplorable production. If I could give this less than 0 stars I would.

Let me explain....The Gang had previously encountered Slicker as a bully in "Fightin' Fools" and now faces him as a con man who sells them "invisible rays" to help them make their robot work. Is the Gang that gullible? (And Spanky, the unofficial leader of the Gang, is 13-years-old! Surely, he would have had more intellectual sense!)That having been said, this film is rather fun. As the Gang builds and tests their robot, they copy some of the same things they witnessed in a previous labor-saving robotics demonstration (they even mimic the famous line: "Robot, do you feel in condition to go to work?").Even more fun is to be had. Slicker enlists a friend of his to step inside the robot, and fool the Gang into believing their endeavor was successful. When the robot is instructed to mow Froggy's lawn, he does more than that --- he mows down flowers and vegetables, turns over wheelbarrows, and flings newspapers all over the yard. All filmed at double-speed!! It's really cool to watch.Sadly, what is less fun is when Froggy's dad gives the kids a lecture on personal responsibility (such is often the case in MGM Our Gang films). This lecture is then followed by one of Froggy's lame Aunt Minnie quotes at the end of film: "Never put off till tomorrow what you should have done yesterday!" (this, of course, in inexplicably followed by raucous laughter from the Gang).An interesting side note is that Billy Bletcher, the actor who played Froggy's father, is the guy who provided voices for some of the Warner Brothers cartoons (probably most notably as Henry, the grouchy father bear). His natural baritone voice made him the perfect actor to play Froggy's father. In fact, in an amusing throw-away gag, he even provided a dubbed voice for Froggy's mother! In sum, this is a reasonably enjoyable film that could have been even more so if the writers didn't feel the need to moralize near the end. One more thing: is it really necessary to end an MGM short with a contrived joke that produces forced laughter at the end?Just a thought.

(Possible Spoilers) Flat, dull and unfunny, this was typical of the "adults (for which read 'Authority Figures') know best" plots that betrayed the entire Our Gang concept. In the earlier films, the kids create things and get into trouble, but there was an endearing charm to watching them trying to mimic the kinds of things the adult world had (building a fire engine, operating a playhouse, attending club meetings, etc.)This film uses that familiar idea and then perverts it by using it as a lead to a piece of "do it yourself" moralizing, which robs the film of humor. Also, there are problems with the kids: as someone said, Spanky is way too old to still be playing a thoroughly naive kid (all of the Gang's characters in this film were played as ignorant rubes who would have bought the Brooklyn Bridge if Slicker had offered it to them,) while Freddie "Slicker" Walburn himself looks distracted, as if he wished he were somewhere else. Given the quality of this miserable film, it isn't surprising.