Mickey's Nine is just kids being absolute chaos for 20 minutes

Is it worth watching today? Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for silent slapstick or want to see a very young Mickey Rooney acting like a 40-year-old man in a kid's body.

People who like The Little Rascals will probably find this charming. If you hate grainy footage and people falling over for no reason, you will definitely want to skip it. ⚾

The whole thing starts with a baseball game, but it’s not really about the sports. It’s more about the attitude.

Mickey (who was called Mickey McGuire back then) is the leader of this group called the "Nine." He wears these massive pants that look like they could fit three other kids inside them.

I love how he carries a cigar around. It’s obviously fake, but he chews on it with so much confidence it’s almost scary.

The rival team is just plain mean. They don't just want to win; they want to mentally break these kids.

Their big plan is to lure Mickey and his friend Hambone away to a spooky house. It’s such a classic silent movie trope, but it works because the house is genuinely weird looking.

The set design feels like someone just threw a bunch of old furniture and cobwebs into a barn and called it a day. There is this one shot of a skeleton that is so clearly a guy in a suit, but the way the film is edited makes it feel extra twitchy and strange.

Jimmy Robinson, who plays Hambone, does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the physical comedy. He has this way of bugging his eyes out that makes you laugh even when the joke isn't that great.

Some of the humor hasn't aged perfectly, which is expected for 1927. It's a bit like watching A Rough Party where the energy is high but the logic is nowhere to be found.

I noticed a stray dog in the background of the baseball field that seemed way more interested in a piece of trash than the actual filming. Those little unscripted moments are my favorite part of these old shorts.

The movie gets way better once they actually get inside the house. There are trap doors and things falling from the ceiling, and everyone is just screaming silently at the camera.

It’s much more energetic than something like Six Feet Four, which feels like it takes a decade to get moving. Here, everything happens at 100 miles per hour.

I did find myself wondering why the other kids on the team just kept playing the game while their captain was missing. They seem remarkably unbothered that Mickey was basically kidnapped by the other team.

Maybe they were just happy to finally get a turn at bat without him bossing them around. He really is a tiny tyrant in this one.

There is a scene with a mechanical ghost that actually looks sort of clever for the time. You can see the wires if you look closely, but it doesn't really matter.

It’s a lot more fun than the stuffy atmosphere in Silk Stockings. It feels like the kids were actually having a good time, or at least they were being paid enough to pretend they were.

The editing is pretty rough in spots. There are these jump cuts where characters suddenly teleport two feet to the left between shots.

It adds to the chaotic feeling, like the cameraman was struggling to keep up with the kids. 📽️

I also noticed the film quality dips significantly during the "spooky" scenes. It gets very dark and muddy, making it hard to see who is who.

But the expressions on Rooney's face cut through the grain. He had that movie star magnetism even when he was barely tall enough to reach a door handle.

It’s not a deep story, obviously. It’s just a bunch of gags strung together by a very thin plot about a baseball game.

If you’ve seen The Outcasts of Poker Flat, you know how different these 1920s films can be in terms of tone. This one is definitely on the "just for laughs" side of the spectrum.

I liked the ending, even if it was predictable. The way they wrap up the game while still being terrified from the house is pretty funny.

It’s a weird little time capsule. It reminds me of how kids used to be portrayed as these tough, cigar-chomping street urchins instead of the polished child actors we see now.

Mickey’s Nine isn’t going to change your life. But it’s a solid twenty minutes of pure, unrefined nonsense from a time when movies were still figuring themselves out.

The kid playing the rival captain has a great sneer. I hope he got to play a villain in more movies later on.

Anyway, it's worth a look if you find it on a dusty corner of the internet. Just don't expect it to make much sense. 🤷‍♂️