Jack en vue!

It is quite interesting that many of the comedians who were popular on screen in the thirties saw their film career disappear from view by the end of the war.Examples of this being George Formby and Jack Buchanan.Another whose screen career did not survive the war was Jack Hulbert whose last starring role was in Under your Hat in 1940.It has to be said that given the sort of performance he gave in this film it is a wonder he lasted so long.I suppose he must have been popular but on this evidence it is hard to say why.I really like British musicals and comedies of the thirties so it pains me to say how painfully unfunny Hulbert is.He sings about as well as Fred Astaire but his dancing is no great shakes.However he just continually mugs his way through the film so that after about half an hour you just want to say enough is enough.Funnily enough the role of his sidekick,which is here played by a long forgotten actor would have suited his brother Claude whom i think was a far superior comic actor.Anyone other than a fan of British films of the 30s will find this a bore and will probably not last it out till the final reel.

Jack Hulbert is descended from a long line his father told his mother about being descended from naval heroes. Jack, however, failed school, and became an Able Seaman; he meets admiral's daughter Nancy O'Neil and gets involved in rescuing her, her father, and a submarine that has been stolen by Chinese pirates.

Jack was a popular musical comedy star for British Gaumont, and in this one, he sings and dances in one and a half numbers before the movie gets turned over to the comedy direction of Walter Forde. Forde had begun on the stage as a comic, moved into short comedy production and behind the camera in the late 1920s. He excelled in comedies in which the hero bumbled his way to victory, and this is one of them. Although the now old-fashioned comedy tropes of the British film industry have not aged well for this modern American, they were certainly popular in their day and Hulbert starred in a fair number of comedies in which he lampooned the branches of the armed services and even Bulldog Drummond.

Jack has this picture virtually to himself, the rest of the cast seem utterly lifeless in comparison with his brash breeziness. The film is a product of Empire and the Bulldog Spirit (BS) attitudes come out in force.

Jack is AB seaman Jack Ponsonby in the Navy with a distinguished ancestor in Admiral Ponsonby which constantly fuels his imagination. It also gets him into the right Society to chase the current Admiral's daughter. To prove himself worthy to her and her Dad, no I mean his country, he attempts to discover the whereabouts of the British submarine which was stolen by Chinese bandits and is being ransomed for £800,000. The scenes with these bandits had obviously been constructed with the Shanghai Express or Bitter Tea of General Yen in mind, as it introduces a note of savagery that leaves you feeling maybe Jack is going to get horribly killed here. He also has some sexy clinches with an alluring female which left me wondering if Cicely gave him a piece of her mind when she saw the film!

Throughout he repeatedly sings snatches of his famous song The Hat's On The Side Of My Head to show the audience how jaunty they must always be when faced with adversity. And why not too?! A nice little film for jaunty people like me, glum people and those who don't like '30's British b&w musical comedies should avoid.