Some movies are far too sweet and too good to be too good to be true, and the Scattergood Baines series is just that. It's an entertaining series, but it doesn't hold up well today simply because it's just so darn nice. That's not a bad thing, and the character that Guy Kibbee plays is a well-meaning busybody close interference often works. There's two stories in the third saga of his life in a small town, the most prevalent dealing with young Bobby Watson, an escapee from a boy's home out searching for his father. Kibbee and his wife Emma Dunn take him in, but his determination to find his father obviously means that this will be a temporary arrangement. There's also a young love story with struggling James Corner and Susan Peters that is barely touched on in the first couple of reals and suddenly is utilized to wrap up the whole story.
Much of the recurring cast of homespun neighbors returns including Lee White as the helium voiced train conductor, Fern Emmett as his hatchet-faced wife, Paul White as the black kid who works in Kibbee's store (we should assume the son of the original character he played because Willie Best play that character as an adult in the first two films), and Carl Stockdale as a crotchety squire. It's entertaining hocum that you know where everything will work out in the end, but it is filled with amusing moments that avoids being completely corny. the fast-paced direction of Christie cabin for the entire series makes this an enjoyable entry.
Much of the recurring cast of homespun neighbors returns including Lee White as the helium voiced train conductor, Fern Emmett as his hatchet-faced wife, Paul White as the black kid who works in Kibbee's store (we should assume the son of the original character he played because Willie Best play that character as an adult in the first two films), and Carl Stockdale as a crotchety squire. It's entertaining hocum that you know where everything will work out in the end, but it is filled with amusing moments that avoids being completely corny. the fast-paced direction of Christie cabin for the entire series makes this an enjoyable entry.