Mickey's Medicine Man (1934) Review - Loud Kid Slapstick

If you have about fifteen minutes to spare and want to see a pre-teen Mickey Rooney screaming his lungs out in a terrible bowl cut, Mickey's Medicine Man is definitely... something. It is worth a watch if you love dusty old comedies from the Great Depression, but anyone who hates screechy kid actors should run far away. 🏃‍♂️

The whole plot is basically Mickey and his dirt-patch friends trying to brew and sell fake medicine to make some quick cash. They mix together ink, dish soap, and probably some trash they found behind a barn.

Honestly, Mickey Rooney has so much raw energy here it is almost terrifying. He looks like he drank three cups of black coffee right before the director yelled action.

The story is paper thin, even thinner than Pop Tuttle's Lost Control which at least had some weird machine gag to keep things moving. Here, the kids mostly just run around a very dusty vacant lot.

But the real star for me was baby Billy Barty. He plays Mickey's little brother and spends his screen time crawling into things he shouldn't, which is genuinely funny.

There is this one scene where a guy falls backward into a giant tub of soapy water. The splash is so ridiculously loud you can tell they put the microphone right next to the bucket. 💦

Also, the kid with the giant freckles has some of the absolute worst fake crying I have ever seen. He literally just rubs his dirty knuckles in his eyes and yells "Wah!" at the sky.

I kept thinking about how dusty everything looks on set. Every time someone falls down, a huge cloud of grey dirt explodes off their pants.

It is not quite as chaotic as Cleaning Up!!?, but it has that same desperate energy of early shorts where nobody was quite sure what the camera was supposed to be doing.

Spencer Bell shows up too, doing his usual comedy routine. It is a bit uncomfortable to watch today because of the heavy 1930s racial tropes, which... yeah, let's just say it has not aged beautifully.

If you can look past the outdated cringe, there is a strange charm to how cheap and fast it all feels.

The scruffy dog in this movie deserves an Oscar. He just looks incredibly confused by all the screaming but still manages to hit his marks perfectly.

At one point, the dog gets chased by a random goat. Why is there a goat in the yard? Who knows. 🐐

I guess the writers just figured kids and goats equal comedy, so they threw it in.

The short ends so fast you might think the tape broke. No real lesson learned, just a quick fade out after a giant soapy mess.

Still, it is a fascinating little time capsule from back when Mickey Rooney was still billed as Mickey McGuire.