Sporting Nuts Review: A Weird 9-Minute Time Capsule

If you have nine minutes to spare and want to see some vintage weirdness, Sporting Nuts is definitely worth a quick watch. 🎣 It is perfect for anyone who loves dusty old movie trivia, but if you hate nasal narrators and corny jokes, you will absolutely hate this.

Honestly, I stumbled on this late last night while looking for something short. It is basically just Pete Smith talking over a bunch of random clips of people doing bizarre athletic stunts.

Smith has this incredibly nasal voice that you either love or want to mute immediately. Personally, I find it kind of comforting, like a old radio that is slightly out of tune.

The whole thing starts with some guys doing weird casting tricks with fishing rods. One guy literally knocks a cigarette out of another guy's mouth with a heavy fishing lure! 🚬

It looks incredibly dangerous. Like, one inch to the left and that guy loses an eye, but everyone in the clip is just smiling like it is nothing.

Then we get some golf tricks. There is a bit where a guy hits a ball right out of a watch crystal without breaking the glass.

I had to rewind that part twice because it actually looked real. Or maybe they just used a fake watch, who knows? 🤷‍♂️

This short reminds me a bit of other silent-era comedies like Picking Peaches, where the sport is just an excuse for silly stunts. But here, the sound is the whole point because of Pete's constant commentary.

He makes these terrible puns that are so bad they actually become funny again. At one point, he talks about a dog catching a fish and makes a joke about the dog "barking up the wrong stream."

The editing is super choppy too. It feels like they had a bunch of leftover footage in the MGM basement and just slapped it together with some glue.

If you have ever seen those old Our Gang shorts like Fair and Muddy, you know the vibe. It is just pure, chaotic energy from a time before television existed.

Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not.

But there is something so charming about how cheap and fast these little shorts feel. They did not care about "art," they just wanted to make some guy in a theater laugh while he waited for the main movie to start.

The fishing segment goes on way too long though. By the third time a guy caught a fish with his bare hands, I was ready for the golf stuff to start.

Still, it is a neat little time capsule. Check it out if you want a quick laugh and some really weird vintage vibes.