I don’t know who’s idea it was to have Sam Rockwell star in a P.G. Wodehouse adaptation, but ok, I have an open mind. You all know I love Sam Rockwell. And even when I watched the preview for Piccadilly Jim (2004) and it opens with swingy cover of “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, even then I wasn’t dissuaded.
And then I watched the movie.
Y’all.
I just can’t.
The levels of CAN’T that I was faced with were insurmountable. I probably should have saved this review for Snark Week, but fuck it. We’re addressing it right now.
The clash themes in whatever the fuck this movie was? How do I even describe it? It’s absolutely the kind of disaster that happens when a studio sees the kind of success that Moulin Rouge (2001) had by combining pop songs and modernisms with a highly stylized period aesthetic and they happen to pull a random adaptation of a P.G. Wodehouse screenplay of all things out of whatever slush pile was immediately available and decide, YES. YES THIS IS THE DIRECTION WE NEED TO GO IN. THE KIDS THESE DAYS LOVE POP MUSIC AND BRIGHT COLORS AND … HISTORICAL NOVELS? FUCK IT! LET’S JUST RUN WITH IT! At this point I’m almost ashamed to mention that the screenplay was adapted by Julian Fellows.
All I’m saying is.. it’s bad.
SO BAD.
Not even Sam Rockwell’s crippling charm can save it. The dialog is so tortured it probably defies the Geneva Convention. Frances O’Connor‘s Y2K flippy bob is probably next on the list for Gen Z to try to revive from whatever shameful grave it was buried in for the last 20 years. Sam Rockwell looks like he got lost trying to find his way to the set of Swingers. And then in between all the “kids these days talk like this” dialog, they throw in random Wodehouse quotes and it is SO FUCKING WEIRD.
Let’s address the costuming.
Have you watched Piccadilly Jim (2004)? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
Find this frock flick at:
Thanks for watching this so we don’t have to! Going to rewatch Charlie’s Angels this weekend instead (one of my favorite movies featuring Sam Rockwell). :)
I was almost cast for this film – thank God I couldn’t make it!
All love to Mr Fellowes, but my suspicion is that he has the wrong sense of comedy to adapt Wodehouse (He’s not humourless, just works to the beat of a different comic drum): if there’s a less Anarchic writer working today then they’re probably writing for the newspapers, not the screen and Wodehouse needs a shot of pure screwball comedy to be at his best.
Having said that, ‘JEEVES & WOOSTER visit DOWNTON ABBEY, mayhem only very narrowly averted’ is a crossover that can and should be made (Though in all honesty this might work best if it very gently deconstructs the average Jeeves & Wooster misadventure by showing it from the perspective of the hard-working staff and very worried hosts who would find retaining their dignity & keeping down their insurance premiums much, much easier if there had at least been SOME advance warning of a painfully-earnest posh boy with the gift of the gab and that Master of Skulduggery he retains as his enabler – ahem, ‘Gentleman’s Gentleman’ – showing up to the Very Important Party).