Mickey's Luck is just Mickey Rooney being a tiny, aggressive kid

You should watch this if you have twenty minutes to kill and want to see what a "child star" looked like before they became overly polished. If you hate slapstick where kids just fall over for no reason, you will absolutely hate this.

It is part of that Mickey McGuire series based on the old comics. Mickey Rooney is like six or seven here and he already has the energy of a man who has had four cups of coffee. ☕

He is wearing this terrible bowl cut. It looks like someone put a literal soup bowl on his head and just hacked away with some garden shears.

The whole thing kicks off because Mickey thinks he found a lucky horseshoe. He spends the rest of the time trying to prove it works while everything around him basically falls apart.

There is a scene with a baseball game that feels like it was filmed in a literal junkyard. I kept worrying one of the kids was going to step on a rusty nail.

The kids in this movie are not "cute" in the way Disney kids are. They look like they haven't had a bath in three weeks and they are probably going to steal your lunch money. 🧢

I noticed one kid in the background who just stares directly into the lens for a solid five seconds. He looks like he doesn't know why he is there or what a movie even is.

It reminded me a little of the vibe in Noisy Noises, but maybe a bit more mean-spirited. Not in a bad way, just in a "kids are actually kind of gross" way.

Billy Barty shows up too, and he is just tiny. He gets shoved around a lot which is sort of uncomfortable to watch now but I guess it was peak comedy in 1928.

The pacing is all over the place. One minute they are arguing about a horseshoe and the next there is a goat. 🐐

I don't really understand why the goat was there. It just sort of wanders through the frame and then the scene ends abruptly.

There is a lot of physical comedy that doesn't quite land because the camera is too far away. You can see someone fall, but you can't see their face, so it feels a bit empty.

Spencer Bell has some funny moments though. He has this way of looking exhausted by the children that feels very relatable.

If you have seen Peter's Pants, you know this kind of neighborhood-kid-chaos style. It is very loud for a silent movie, if that makes sense.

You can almost hear the yelling through the title cards. The font they use for the dialogue is all jagged and aggressive.

I liked the dog. The dog seemed like the only professional actor on the set.

The dog just sits there while the kids are screaming and jumping around like the world is ending. 🐕

The ending is kind of a letdown. It just sort of... stops? Like they ran out of film or the kids had to go home for dinner.

It doesn't have the cleverness of something like One Week. It is much more grounded in just being a bratty kid in the street.

I kept thinking about how much dirt must have been in their lungs. Every time someone falls, a huge cloud of dust kicks up.

It is a weird little artifact of a time when we just let kids throw rocks at each other for entertainment. 🪨

Mickey Rooney’s face is so expressive that it’s almost scary. He doesn't just smile; he shows every single tooth in his head.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But it’s better than most of the stuff you find from that era that tries to be "precious."

This is just grimy and fast. I respect the hustle of it.

Also, the horseshoe thing never really pays off in a way that makes sense. But I guess that is the point of luck.

Sometimes you find a horseshoe and you still get hit in the head with a baseball. ⚾