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MGM intended Rationing to be an object lesson as well as a comedy, to teach the moviegoers the importance of rationing products during World War II. Wallace Beery plays a small town butcher who comes under fire from the local citizens for attempting to honor the ration system. Beery finds himself swamped in a sea of government red tape, and at times is tempted to sidestep the law, but at the end he does his patriotic duty. Like Laurel and Hardy's MGM feature Air Raid Wardens (43), Rationing tends to sacrifice laughs to get its message across. The Beery film has the added handicap of running about twenty minutes too long.