Thank You, Jeeves! is a weird, fast mess that Wodehouse fans might hate

Is it worth a watch?

If you have an hour to kill and you like 1930s movies where people run in and out of doors, then yes. It is fast and loud and doesn't ask you to think at all.

If you are a big fan of the P.G. Wodehouse books, you will probably hate this. It’s not really the Bertie and Jeeves you know from the stories.

The movie starts with Bertie Wooster playing the drums. Not just playing them, but absolutely smashing them like he’s trying to wake up the whole of London.

David Niven plays Bertie and he is just... a lot. He has so much energy that it’s almost exhausting to watch him bounce around the room.

Arthur Treacher is Jeeves, and he looks like he’s permanently smelling something slightly rotten. It’s great. He’s the best part of the whole thing because he barely reacts to the chaos.

Jeeves actually tries to quit in the first ten minutes because of the drumming. I don't blame him, honestly.

Then this girl shows up in their flat while it's pouring rain outside. She’s got half of some secret plans for a new airplane engine or something, I wasn't really paying attention to the details of the plans.

The movie stops being a comedy about a butler and becomes a weird spy thriller for a bit. But like, a very cheap spy thriller.

They head off to this place called Mooring Manor. It’s one of those classic movie houses where the lighting is always a bit too dark and there are too many hallways.

The plot gets really messy here. There are guys pretending to be from Scotland Yard, but they are clearly just thugs in bad suits.

One thing that bugged me was the pacing. It’s only about an hour long, but it feels like they tried to cram three different movies into it.

There’s a scene where Bertie is trying to be sneaky and he just keeps making noise. It’s supposed to be funny, but it goes on for a long time.

I noticed that the sets look a bit flimsy. When someone slams a door, you can almost see the walls shake a little bit.

It reminds me of other low-budget stuff from that era, like The Viking, where the ambition is way higher than the actual money they had to spend.

Willie Best is in this too, playing a character named Bill. His role is... well, it’s very much of its time, which makes it uncomfortable to watch today.

He gets stuck in a room with Bertie and they have to do this whole blackface routine to hide. It’s a very weird and cringey moment that kills the vibe of the movie completely.

Actually, let's talk about David Niven’s mustache. It’s so thin it looks like it was drawn on with a pencil right before the cameras started rolling.

He’s very charming, though. Even when he’s being an idiot, you kind of want him to succeed.

There is a specific moment where Jeeves has to drive a car and he looks so bored by the high-speed chase. It made me laugh out loud because it’s the most "Jeeves" thing in the whole film.

The ending is very abrupt. Everything gets solved, the bad guys are gone, and Jeeves decides not to quit after all.

Some stuff I noticed:

• The rain in the opening scene looks like someone is just standing off-camera with a garden hose.
• Bertie’s drum set is weirdly small for how much noise it makes.
• The "secret plans" look like a child’s drawing of a car engine.
• Arthur Treacher can say more with one eyebrow than David Niven can with his whole body.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely even a good adaptation of the source material.

But it’s got that weird 1930s energy where everyone talks fast and nobody seems to care if the plot makes sense. It’s a bit like School's Out in how it just sort of rambles along until it stops.

If you want real Wodehouse, go read the books or watch the Fry and Laurie version. This is more like a weird fever dream starring a very young movie star and a guy who was born to play a butler.

I don't think I'll ever watch it again, but I'm glad I saw it once. It’s fine. Just fine. 🎷

One more thing—the way they handle the mystery is so lazy. The bad guys basically explain their whole plan for no reason at all.

It’s like the writers realized they only had ten minutes left and needed to finish the script before lunch. I've seen more complex plots in a The Fable of the Traveling Salesman short.

Anyway, watch it for Arthur Treacher. He’s the only one who seems to know what movie he’s in.