Due to the success of Hal Roach's Our Gang series, there soon were quite a few knock-off versions by rival studios. "Oh Boy" looks much like an Our Gang film....as did the Mickey McGuire series (starring Mickey Rooney) and a few others. However, none of them ever came close to the quality and staying power of Roach's films.
Like the Our Gang comedies, this one had many of the same sorts of characters....the fat kid, the black kid, the rich effeminate kid as a rival as well as a dog. If you didn't know better, you'd swear that this Bray production was an Our Gang film....that is until you realized it just wasn't as fun to watch.
In "Oh Boy", the effeminate rich kid, Cuthbert, is out to romance the girl across the street. The gang tries to stop him and ends up getting beaten up by the surprisingly macho boy. However, things get very weird. In the Our Gang shorts, often the kids had homemade fire engines or cars...but they clearly were kid-powered toys. Here, inexplicably, Cuthbert and the kids all drive real automobiles...which really makes no sense at all nor is there any explanation of this....it just is. Ultimately, there's another showdown and Cuthbert is bested.
Apart from a joke involving suspenders, there aren't any real laughs in this one. Also, the underlying message is that if a boy is effeminate, the best thing to do is beat him up for the good of society! All in all, not funny and a bit mean spirited....and ample proof that the Roach films simply had better writing and better characters.
