Better Late Then Never

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Based on a novel by Monica Ewer, this is the usual nonsense about an offhand member of the aristocracy obliged to live incognito in a shabby Bloomsbury boarding house where he finds life among "real people" more congenial than among the frivolous rich when he is eventually able to return to their ranks. Ian Hunter looked not a day older ten years later in Michael Powell's quota quickie 'Something Always Happens' (1934) in which he found himself again sharing humble dwellings with a lovable young scamp (here played by Mickey Brantford), but he didn't then have a landlady as comely as doll-faced young Mary Odette.As in most films of this era, interest always picks up whenever the camera goes outdoors - including a scene actually shot atop an open-topped tram - while the faces of people who lived over ninety years ago are always fascinating to study, like gangling Gladys Hamer as the resident skivvy and button-eyed Maud Gill as usual playing an old maid. It's always fun to see Moore Marriott, here appearing unbilled as a solicitor; while at least two other minor characters - an art dealer and a dealer in clockwork mice - further resemble Marriott hiding behind a fake beard.