Thank You, Jeeves! (1936)

What I didn’t like about this film:

Yes, I am breaking with tradition: this is not going to be the usual type of blog post format I use for film reviews on Dustedoff. For the simple reason that this travesty of a film doesn’t deserve that much time and effort.

So, what I didn’t like:

The mockery they’ve made of a Wodehouse story. Writers Joseph Hoffman and Stephen Gross, and director Arthur Greville Collins, give credit to Wodehouse but all that remains in the film that is even vaguely connected to Wodehouse and his style are the two main characters: Bertie Wooster (David Niven) and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves (Arthur Treacher). Nothing else, not the elements of the story, not the language, not the story, is anything like the Jeeves-and-Wooster stories.

The characters are insipid. Wooster isn’t a chump; Jeeves is. In fact, Jeeves is such a moron, he doesn’t even realize he’s literally on the edge of something big. He is distinguished only by that stiff upper lip; no brilliant brains, no coming up with genius schemes to haul the young master out of the mulligatawny. In fact, when Jeeves eventually does come to Bertie’s help, it’s with fists flying. It’s Jeeves’s fighting skills, not his brainpower, that comes in use here.

Continue reading

Waterloo Bridge (1940)

Individually, both Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne said Love Affair was their favourite of the films they’d acted in. Quite an achievement for a film—one reason why I’d put Waterloo Bridge in the same league as Love Affair. The two stars of this film, Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh, also rated Waterloo Bridge as their favourite of all the films they’d acted in (yes, Vivien Leigh rated this higher even than Gone With the Wind!). Like Love Affair, this is also a love story. And it too takes a very tragic turn midway.

Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh in Waterloo Bridge

Continue reading