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.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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