Trouble Ahead: A Bouncy, Slightly Baffling Trip Through Time

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for 1930s British farce where everyone talks a mile a minute. If you need a plot that makes sense, keep walking. People who love stuff like Skinner Steps Out will find a similar rhythm here—lots of doors slamming and people being frantic for no reason.

Trouble Ahead isn't trying to change the world. It just wants you to laugh at a guy getting flustered. Sometimes that’s plenty.

Notes from the couch

• The pacing is frantic. It feels like the director was afraid we’d fall asleep if someone stopped talking for even a second.
• Miles Malleson is doing a lot of heavy lifting. He has this look on his face like he’s constantly trying to remember if he left the stove on.
• The sets feel a bit cramped. You can almost see the edges of the room if you squint hard enough.
• There’s a specific scene involving a telephone that goes on for way too long. It stops being a plot point and starts being a weird endurance test.

It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in Hot Turkey, though maybe a little less focused. There’s a scene near the middle where the camera just sort of hangs there while two actors argue about nothing. It felt like they forgot the cue to move on to the next room. I loved it.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Trouble Ahead (1934) through its definitive frames.

The dialogue is so fast that you’ll definitely miss half the jokes if you’re looking at your phone. Don't do that. It’s not that deep, but the speed is the whole point. It’s like watching a train that’s slightly off the tracks but still moving forward at full speed. 🚂

I wasn't sure why the lead character was so worried about the telegram, but by the third act, I had stopped caring about the 'why' and just started watching the faces. People in movies back then had such expressive eyebrows. They don't make them like that anymore.

It’s imperfect. It’s loud. It’s barely a story. But it has a heartbeat, which is more than I can say for a lot of modern stuff that feels like it was written by a spreadsheet. 🎥