Jessie Matthews is charmingly bad at being a maid in The Man from Toronto

If you are looking for that action movie with Kevin Hart, you are about seventy years too early. This is the 1933 version of The Man from Toronto, and honestly, it is way more charming even if the plot is paper-thin. It is the kind of movie you put on when you want to see people in nice clothes talk very fast in rooms that look like stage sets.

It is definitely worth a watch if you like Jessie Matthews. She was a huge star back then, and you can see why. She has this nervous, vibrating energy that makes even the boring scenes feel like something is happening. If you hate old movies where the whole conflict could be solved by one honest conversation, you will probably want to throw your remote at the screen.

The whole setup is pretty standard for the thirties. Leila is a widow who needs money, or rather, needs to keep her money. She has to marry Fergus, a bachelor from Canada, because of some weird legal stuff in a will. It is the kind of movie logic that only exists to get two attractive people in the same house.

Instead of just saying hello, Leila decides to pretend to be a maid. I always find it funny how rich characters in these movies think 'being a maid' just means wearing a different apron and occasionally holding a tray. Jessie Matthews is terrible at being a maid, which I think is supposed to be the joke, but sometimes it just feels like she forgot what her character was doing.

There is this one scene where she is trying to serve tea and she looks like she has never seen a teapot before in her life. It is slightly funny, but it goes on a bit. You can tell the director just wanted her to be cute for the camera. Ian Hunter plays Fergus, the Canadian guy, and he is... fine. He has a very solid face, like he was carved out of a nice piece of oak.

He is supposed to be this rough-and-tumble Canadian, but he mostly just looks like a British guy who spent a weekend outdoors once. Their chemistry is okay, but it is not exactly fireworks. It is more like a polite sparkler. They have these long conversations where they talk around the fact that they clearly like each other.

I noticed the background characters actually steal a lot of the show. Margaret Yarde is in this, and she has such a presence. She is one of those character actors who feels like a real person who just wandered onto the set from the street. Every time she is on screen, the movie feels a bit more grounded and less like a floating feather.

The pacing is a bit weird. It starts off fast, then it kind of stalls in the middle when they are at the country house. It reminds me a bit of Publicity Pays in how it tries to force the comedy through misunderstandings. Some of the jokes feel really old, like stuff your great-grandpa would find hilarious but just makes me tilt my head.

There is a lot of talk about money. Everyone is worried about their 'prospects.' It is a very 1930s obsession. You see it in other films from this era like Good Intentions too. It makes the romance feel a bit like a business deal, which I guess it was back then.

I did love the look of the film though. The black and white cinematography is crisp. There is a specific shot of Jessie Matthews looking through a doorway that is framed perfectly. It is one of those small moments that shows someone was actually paying attention to the visuals, even if the script was a bit mushy.

One thing that bothered me was the sound. Sometimes the music just swells up for no reason and drowns out what they are saying. Or maybe that was just the copy I was watching. It made a few of the romantic lines sound like they were being delivered during a parade.

Is it a masterpiece? No. It is a bit like a fancy biscuit. It is sweet, it goes well with tea, but you are going to be hungry again in twenty minutes. It lacks the bite of the better screwball comedies that came out a few years later.

If you have seen Ronny or some of the other light European comedies from that time, you know the vibe. It is very 'theatrical.' People stand in the middle of the room to deliver their lines. They wait for the laugh that isn't there because there is no live audience.

The ending happens very fast. It is like the writers realized they only had five minutes left and had to wrap up the whole 'I am actually a rich widow' secret. Fergus takes it surprisingly well. In real life, he would probably be pretty annoyed that his maid was actually his future boss/wife lying to him for weeks.

But hey, it is a movie. We are here for the happy ending and Jessie Matthews' big eyes. It delivers on that. It is a harmless, slightly silly bit of fluff that makes the world of 1933 look a lot more organized than it probably was. Don't expect too much and you will have a decent time.

I should mention George Zucco is in this too. Usually, he is playing a creepy villain in a horror movie, so seeing him in a light comedy is a bit of a trip. He is actually quite good. It makes me wish he did more stuff like this instead of just being the 'scary guy' all the time.

Final thought: The hats in this movie are incredible. I don't know how they stayed on their heads. It is worth watching just for the millinery work alone. 👒