The Neighbors' Kids (1909) User Reviews

No Mother To Guide Them

[boblipton · 6/10 · 22 April 2022]

When two young sisters are left unsupervised, they run riot, playing tricks and practical jokes on all the neighbors.

Ben Turpin is supposed to be present, but given the typical long and middle shots, he's impossible to distinguish. What I did spot was a Murphy bed, which the girls trap a sleeper in. This now holds the record for the earliest Murphy Bed sighting in the movies!

Brats.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 20 May 2022]

For 1909, this Essanay production is exceptional and quite funny. Now, well over a hundred years later, it's easy to find faults in the film, but for the day, "The Neighbor's Kids" was a real laugh riot!

The film, at nearly 8 minutes, is rather long for 1909. It begins with folks having some sort of party with friends. One of them brings along their little girl and she, along with the host's little girl, run amok doing all sorts of devious pranks on everyone. Some are funny, such as replacing face powder with ashes from the fireplace and some are incredibly bad, such as folding a man inside the wall in his foldaway bed! But it IS very entertaining and must have elicited a lot of laughs when it was shown in theaters.

The pranks are not exactly subtle and all too often you wonder how could the adults not notice the two little brats doing these pranks...as they are in the same room and SHOULD have noticed. But when the film was made, they knew audiences had to suspend disbelief and they most likely did and just enjoyed this funny little film.