Summary
A monochrome whirlwind set in the tawdry back-lots of a Depression-era racetrack, An Overall Hero filters Americana through a child’s kaleidoscope: bookies in straw boatlers, hooves drumming like jazz snares, cigar smoke curling into dollar signs. Eight-year-old Tildy, gap-toothed and barefoot, haunts the stables with her simian shadow Jo-Jo, a scene-stealing chimp who wears a discarded jockey’s cap at a rakish tilt. They eavesdrop on two track-rats—Grease-Spot Charlie and Slicker Moran—planning to dope the favorite, Iron Shamrock, and stuff the purse with a 30-1 outsider. Tildy’s moral compass spins, Jo-Jo hoots in indignation, and together they swap the syringe of sedative for sugar water, derailing the fix without a soul the wiser. When the heavies discover the switch, they chase the kid-and-simian duo across grandstands, betting windows, and finally a moonlit freight yard where boxcars become castles and every shadow a dragon. The showdown is a Rube Goldberg ballet of banana peels, thrown horseshoes, and a runaway betting board that clocks the crooks square in the ego. Justice, served by a pint-sized avenger and her furry accomplice, feels less like moral instruction than like a carnival game rigged by fate itself.
Synopsis
A little girl and her chimp foil a plot to fix a horse race. When the crooks figure out who spoiled their plan, they set out to get revenge, only to be outsmarted by a kid and a monkey.
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