Dishonour Bright Review: Smug Mustaches and 1930s Bedroom Farce

Should you actually watch Dishonour Bright tonight? Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for dusty 1930s British courtroom farces and posh people talking very quickly.

If you want fast-paced modern jokes or high-stakes drama, you will probably turn this off after about ten minutes. 🥱

The whole thing kicks off with a messy divorce court scandal. Stephen Champion, played by Tom Walls himself, is being dragged through the mud as a shameless Don Juan.

The prosecuting counsel is trying his absolute best to make Stephen look like a monster. But Stephen just stands there in the witness box, smiling like a cat that got the cream, claiming he is just human and honest.

Tom Walls has this incredibly smug mustache. It practically deserves its own credit in the opening titles.

He plays the charming scoundrel so naturally it makes you wonder about his real life. And then there is a very young George Sanders, who shows up looking absurdly youthful and already perfecting that oily, aristocratic sneer he did so well later on.

Actually, seeing George Sanders here reminded me a bit of the silent era dramas like The Love That Dares, where men in suits spent half their time looking vaguely guilty in drawing rooms.

The movie is written by Ben Travers, who wrote those famous Aldwych farces back in the day. You can tell because people keep walking into the wrong bedrooms at the worst possible moments.

There is a bit in the middle where a character gets incredibly confused about a bus schedule. It goes on for about three minutes too long, and I literally wrote down "why are we talking about buses" in my notepad. 🚌

Cecil Parker is also in this, doing his usual flustered-man routine. He is always great at looking like his collar is slightly too tight for his neck.

Eugene Pallette shows up too, which is weird because he is very American and his gravelly voice feels like it belongs in a completely different movie. But hey, he is always fun to watch anyway.

It does not have the musical energy of something like Looking on the Bright Side, but the dialogue has a nice, snappy rhythm if you can keep up with the accent.

The women in the cast, like Betty Stockfeld, mostly just have to look pretty and act outraged. It is very much a product of 1936 in that way, for better or worse.

There is a scene where someone pours a drink, and the sound effect of the liquid hitting the glass is so loud it sounds like a waterfall. 🍷 The Foley artist must have been sitting right next to the microphone that day.

Also, the lighting in the courtroom scenes is surprisingly dark. It looks less like a British court and more like a spooky castle basement, which is probably just a budget issue.

It is definitely not a masterpiece, and some of the jokes feel older than the hills. But if you like watching posh people get tangled in their own silly lies, it is a fun little time capsule.