Time Out for Lessons (1939) User Reviews

Learning The Importance Of School Work With The Little Rascals

[Ron Oliver · 7/10 · 5 April 2000]

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

With the help of his dad, Alfalfa imagines what it would be like in college, when, as a football hero, he is ineligible to play in the big game because he neglected his TIME OUT FOR LESSONS.

This little movie with a moral, made when the Rascals were a bit older, is thoroughly unfunny. Only the jitterbugging scene - with Darla belting out `Swinging The Jinx Away' - has any pep to it.

In Time Out for Lessons, moralizing threatens to get out of hand in this Our Gang comedy

[tavm · 6/10 · 18 January 2015]

This M-G-M comedy short, Time Out for Lessons, is the one hundred eighty-sixth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the ninety-eighth talkie. Alfalfa and Mickey are planning their next football game but before they can do so, Alf's father comes in and tells him about his bad grades and also tells him how his college chances will come to naught if he keeps neglecting studies. From there, it's a dream about what college life is like...Okay, there have been lessons before in an Our Gang comedy but it's usually accompanied by plenty of laughs. Here, the viewer gets hit on the head over and over with it until one forgets this was supposed to be a comedy series. Still, during the dream sequence, one could enjoy the mocking way some of the lines are said as well as some swell dancing sequences during Darla's number. So on that note, Time Out for Lessons is-at the least-worth a look for any OG completists out there.

Ugh! Make it stop!!!!

[jbacks3 · 1/10 · 29 December 2004]

Time Out For Lessons serves as just another example of how MGM ruined the Our Gang series by substituting messages for comedy. Here we see 12-year old Alfalfa fantasizing about a football career at the expense of his homework and the resulting consequences. About the best thing that can be said for this entry is that with the exception of Mickey (Robert Blake) Gubitosi, it lacks the increasingly obnoxious cast that would later infect the series as the old Hal Roach cast outgrew their roles. This is slight comfort compared to having to sit through a humorless one-reel "comedy." Hal Roach would never let this script on the set. MGM would produce a total of 52 Our Gang shorts from 1938-43 (released into 1944), perhaps 5 of them approach the level of the earlier Roach-produced entries. Time Out For Lessons isn't one of them!

Tedious time-wasting morality play.

[kpetnews · 3/10 · 24 September 2010]

There IS a gag -- at the very beginning. Then Alfalfa's humorless dad comes in and starts lecturing the poor freckled dope about how he can't give up his studies. We go to a college fantasy done completely straight and without an ounce of humor in it. Alfalfa's about to be the hero of the big football game when Waldo arbitrarily marches in and, um, tells him that he can't. And that's the only reason why you shouldn't neglect your studies, because the college you go to won't let you win their football games unless your grades are good. Sure.

Of course, Alfalfa believes what his father tells him, does an about face and does some more stilted lecturing to his friends. Wow. I'm inspired.

Pretty much the solid example of how MGM was driving this thing into the ground. Fortunately the next two entries would provide more in the way of entertainment.

Between Education and Entertainment!

[bandcrsh · 11 August 2003]

"Time Out For Lessons" was a pretty good short, it is okay to have fun, as long as you do not neglect your schoolwork, his friends were pretty furious when they heard that he did not study before the big game. I give this short *******out of**********.

Well made but unfunny and utterly pointless

[dbborroughs · 3/10 · 24 September 2009]

Too stretched out tale of Alfalfa talking with his dad who wants him to study, while Alfalfa wants to play football. he dad explains that with out studying even if he gets to college he still won't be allowed to play football if he doesn't keep his grades up.

This is a long winded and ultimately pointless and one note film. If you're like me you'll get to the end and wonder why you bothered. The problem is that the film kind of stops about four minutes in for a long fantasy sequence and musical number about being in college. It serves no purpose whats so ever. Its really well done, actually being some of the best dancing in any of the MGMs but at the same time it serves no purpose other than killing time. And as good as it is its not worth seeing.

This is one of the best made but least necessary of any of the films. Take a pass.

The Worst Our Gang To This Point

[Michael_Elliott · 18 February 2013]

Time Out for Lessons (1939)

* (out of 4)

Alfalfa and Mickey are in a room where they're supposed to be doing homework but they're actually planning out a football play. Alfalfa is on his way out to practice when his father stops him and wants to talk about his future without studying. We then cut to a fantasy sequence where Alfalfa is in school, not studying and it's the night before a big game. TIME OUT FOR LESSONS has a message but it's completely lost throughout the incredibly boring and lifeless story. There have been quite a few negative Our Gang shorts from MGM but this here is certainly the worst that the series has seen up to this point. There's really not too many good things you can say about this other than it thankfully just runs 9-minutes so it's over rather quickly. Outside of this there's really nothing going on here. It's pretty bad when the kids themselves can't bring any charm to the film because they usually do at least that. There's simply no story here and dragging it out doesn't help anything. Even worse is that there's not a single laugh to be had and you really had to wonder what the writers were thinking when they came up with this.

Not that bad

[tcn-545-428319 · 12 January 2015]

I beg to differ with critics such as Leonard Maltin and others who critiqued it as a humorless, moralizing short. I saw humor in the dance scene, in Coach Spanky and Leonard Landy, in both of the dorm and locker room scenes, and the reaction of the kids at the end to the statement by Alfalfa "from now on we take time out for lessons" as if they weren't taking the statement seriously in undertones of "sure, yeah, and I bet". Even the way Alfalfa expressed the statement came across as mocking. The only one who seemed serious and didactic was Alfalfa's dad. I found more humor in this short than such Our Gang classics as "Fly My Kite" and "Dogs is Dogs". I viewed it not as a moralizing short but a moralizing spoof.