Cheer Up! (1936) review - silly, cheap, and surprisingly fun

If you have got seventy minutes to kill and a weird tolerance for tea-and-crumpets tap dancing, Cheer Up! is a pretty harmless way to spend an afternoon. ☕

People who love high-energy 1930s nonsense will find it charming. But anyone looking for actual depth or modern joke structures should probably steer clear.

The plot is basically a cardboard box of clichés.

Two guys who write songs are totally flat broke, so they try to trick a rich guy into giving them cash. Only, surprise, the rich guy is also completely broke.

It is the kind of setup that was probably written on a napkin during lunch at the Ealing studio canteen. It does not make much sense, and honestly, the movie does not care if it does.

Stanley Lupino is the main draw here.

He has this incredibly elastic face and moves like he is made of springs. There is a scene early on where he is trying to hide in a room and he basically folds himself into a piece of furniture.

It is silly, but it actually works.

The songs are... well, they are okay. They are not going to get stuck in your head like the tunes in Girl Crazy, but they have a nice bouncy rhythm to them.

Sally Gray shows up too and she is lovely. Though she does not get a whole lot to do besides look pretty and sing a bit.

Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for a very young Charles Hawtrey.

He is basically a kid here. You can already see that weird, nervous energy he brought to his later films.

There is a really bizarre bit where a guy gets his coat caught in a door. The scene goes on about 20 seconds too long, and the silence starts to feel awkward rather than emotional or funny.

I kept waiting for the punchline, but the punchline was just... him pulling on the coat. 🧥

Some of the editing is incredibly choppy.

Like, one second they are in an office, and the next, there is a sudden cut to a musical number with zero transition. It feels like the film roll got damaged and they just taped it back together in a hurry.

You also get some of that classic 1930s sound design where the background noise just completely vanishes when someone stops talking.

It is like they were filming in a vacuum. It is a bit distracting if you are paying attention.

Is it as wacky as something like Broadway Buckaroo? Maybe not, but it has that same cheap, desperate-to-please energy.

Sometimes that is exactly what you want on a rainy Sunday.

It does not try to be art.

It just wants you to... well, cheer up. And honestly? It kind of works.