Biffy would not squirt the squirter, Jeeves.

Jeeves and Wooster

2.3: Pearls Mean Tears

(aka The Con)

I can’t fault the competence and faithfulness with which this episode is siphoned out, but it doesn’t quite sing for me. As Bertie recounts, “Life can be delish, with a sunny disposish” and this is merely serviceable diner grub. Bertie falling for the manipulations of Soapy Sid, masquerading as a curate with his “sister” is engaging enough, and there’s good fun to be had from Aunt Agatha being hoisted by her own petard and unfairly accusing the lower orders of burglary, but the other plotline is one of the less scintillating Wodehouse inventions.

The Inimitable Jeeves (previously plundered in 1.1 and 1.3) provides the Soapy Sid plot, in which Aunt Agatha attempts to pair her nephew off (“You should be breeding children, Bertie”), to understandable disdain. Her choice of intended is Aline Hemingway (Rebecca Saire, veteran of The Quatermass Conclusion and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, as well as A Bit of Fry and Laurie), the aforementioned sister of Sidney (Graham Seed). Bertie’s nonplussed, (“Look, I don’t want to go to any blasted museum!”) and is berated for his coarseness (“Kindly mind your language, Bertie!”). In contrast to the short story, this doesn’t take place in Roville, France but rather non-descript seaside town Westcombe-on-Sea (some might say it’s a shame such choices weren’t made with the series’ American adventures), but mostly it follows course.

Sid manages to snatch Agatha’s pearls, as well as swindling £100 out of Bertie, despite Jeeves’ warnings that he has been seen selling tips at the race course. Jeeves comes through, of course (“Ere, that’s illegal that is” is Aline’s response on learning Jeeves has been through her luggage to retrieve the pearls) and Agatha well and truly has to eat humble pie after bringing a maid to tears and levelling accusations against the hotel (“These aren’t the chaps are they?” asks her nephew on retrieving the valuables) in a rare occasion of Bertie being able to hold court.

So that sequence is fairly satisfying. Less so is the predicament of Bertie’s pal Biffy Biffen, a less than a bright spark and a highly forgetful one, played with soporific tendencies by Philip Shelley. Biffy has gone and got engaged to Honoria Glossop but doesn’t really know why, since he is doting after his intended, who he managed to meet on his way to New York, then lose through forgetting her surname.

There’s a not-as-good-as-it-should-have-been rerun of a dinner with Sir Roderick Glossop, in which Biffy fails to assassinate the brain specialist with a water-filled plastic flower (“Biffy would not squirt the squirter, Jeeves”). We do learn that Jeeves has a niece (revelations of his family and intimate affairs are always welcome and often surprising), who just so happens to be Mabel (Jenny Whiffen), the object of Biffy’s affections. It’s an instance of Jeeves, not being in possession of the facts, doing an associate of Bertie’s an injustice (I feel as if this has happened several times, but I can’t recall other instances offhand).

Rather than the Palace of Beauty reunion of the story (Mabel was in a tank, wearing a muff, playing Queen Elizabeth or Boadicea, “or someone of that period”), this occurs at a full-on theatre, during a performance of “Woof Woof” (the accompanying song is amusingly literal) and all ends well. I think it’s Shelley, not the poet, who brings this one down a notch. The best man and manservant exchange finds Bertie asking “Do you know what I look for in a song?” to which Jeeves replies “I have often wondered”.

Sources:

Aunt Agatha Speaks Her Mind/ Pearls Mean Tears (Chapters 3 & 4) The Inimitable Jeeves

The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy (Chapter 6) Carry On, Jeeves

Recurring characters:

Aunt Agatha (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.3)

Sir Roderick Glossop (1.1, 2.3)

Lady Glossop (1.1, 2.3)

Honoria Glossop (1.1, 2.3)

Freddie (1.1, 1.3, 2.3)

“Barmy” Fotheringay-Phipps (1.1, 1,2, 1.4, 1.5, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3)

“Oofy” Prosser (1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 2.2, 2.3)

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Two hundred thousand pounds, for this outstanding example of British pulchritude and learning.

The Avengers 4.18: The Girl From Auntie
I’ve mentioned that a few of these episodes have changed in my appreciation since I last watched the series, and The Girl from Auntie constitutes a very pronounced uptick. Indeed, I don’t know how I failed to rate highly the estimable Liz Fraser filling in for Diana Rigg – mostly absent, on holiday –for the proceedings (taking a not dissimilar amateur impostor-cum-sidekick role to Fenella Fielding in the earlier The Charmers). I could watch Fraser all day, and it’s only a shame this was her single appearance in the show.

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

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Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

May 29, 2017

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

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This is bad. Bad for movie stars everywhere.

October 17, 2015

Trailers Hail, Caesar!
The Coen Brothers’ broader comedies tend to get a mixed response from critics, who prefer their blacker, more caustic affairs (A Serious Man, Barton Fink, Inside Llewyn Davis). Probably only Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Art Thou? have been unreservedly clutched to bosoms, so it remains to be seen how Hail, Caesar! fares. The trailer shows it off as big, bold, goofy, shamelessly cheerful and – something that always goes down well with awards ceremonies – down with taking affectionate swipes at Tinseltown. Seeing as how the unabashedly cartoonish The Grand Budapest Hotel swung a host of Oscar nominations (and a couple of wins), I wouldn’t put anything out of the question. Also, as O Brother proved, punctuation marks in titles are a guarantee of acclaim.

I’m an easy sell for Coens fare, though. Burn After Reading is very funny, particularly John Malkovich’s endlessly expressive swearing. Intolerable Cruelty makes me laugh a lot, particularly Clooney’s double t…

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June 03, 2014

Robocop (1987)
Robocop is one of a select group of action movies I watched far too many times during my teenage years. One can over-indulge in the good things, and pallor can be lost through over-familiarity. It’s certainly the case that Paul Verhoeven’s US breakthrough wears its limited resources on its battered metal-plated chest and, in its “Director’s Cut” form at least, occasionally over-indulges his enthusiastic lack of restraint. Yet its shortcomings are minor ones. It remains stylistically impressive and thematically as a sharp as a whistle. This year’s remake may have megabucks and slickness on its side but there is no vision, either in the writing or direction. The lack of focus kills any chance of longevity. Verhoeven knows exactly the film he’s making, moulded to fit his idiosyncratic foibles. It might not be his best executed, but in terms of substance, as he recognises, it is assuredly his best US movie. Alas, given the way he’s been unceremoniously ditched by Hollywood, i…

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