The Wrong Box

I saw this film purely by accident and had never heard of it. I now cannot believe this isn't a hugely famous film and seems not to be recognised as the classic it is. I would go as fa as saying this is one of the finest British comedies of all time! The amazing cast list should be recommendation to anyone and why this film isn't well known when it contains some of the finest screen performances of some great British talent is quite beyond me. It is by far Bryan Forbes best film as this is brilliantly and perfectly directed. The fantastic actors are beautifully restrained when necessary and note perfect throughout, which is a credit to Forbes as well as to each actor. It is excellently well filmed and interestingly structured. All elements are used flawlessly. The editing is brilliant with sound and picture from the end of one scene/shot being cut/combined to great comedic effect with the next scene/shot's start. The script and story are hilarious and keep a fast but not rushed pace until the slightly rushed ending which is the only slight shame but it is not a bad ending at all and does not detract from the whole films appeal. The cast are universally superb with many career best performances albeit in small parts. Peter Sellers is extraordinary and so so funny as Dr. Pratt. A perfect performance and truly stupendous in his interactions with his pet kitten! Tony Hancock is also brilliant in a cameo, showing his comic talent on the big screen. Peter Cook has never come close to being this good in another film in my opinion. He is brilliant and restrained. The only time I've seen him as funny in a film as he was on TV. Dudley Moore is also very funny and Michael Caine is just right in an early role. Legends John Mills and Ralph Richardson are at their incredible best but best of all is Wilfred Lawson as the butler Peacock. He is mesmerising, unbelievably funny and it is one of the greatest comedy characterisations I've seen. Lawson gives a genius performance in a genius film where from the smallest part to the stars, everyone is perfect and almost everything is perfectly executed. A total surprise classic!

This is another candidate for the ultimate anti-accolade; that of "The Worst Film I Ever Saw". The difference with this one is that it unaccountably, bafflingly, scores respectably at IMDb. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore can be quite funny but their proper milieu is the 30-minute TV sketch show. Then there's the script. There might be a funny screen-play waiting to be written on the chosen plot subject, that of the last-surviving competitors in a tontine being two brothers who hate each other.... but this isn't it. I think the best you can say about this film is that all the players (and what an impressive cast they are) do their best with this witless material. But it's all pointless. To make a decent comedy there have to be a few jokes scattered about. Funny ones work best for me. I didn't as much as smile once. A complete waste of time.

If this is British humor, forget it. I thought I had seen miserable films and then I found the definition of miserable-this film. This is an absolute colossal bomb. In 1963's 'The Mad World' we saw what people would go through for money. This film reminded me of the old adage-Where there's a will, there is family. This daffy film begins with children being drawn into a lottery. The last survivor wins. It then proceeds to show how many of these youngsters grew and met untimely deaths-through wars, mountain climbings, cave-ins, duels gone wrong,etc. This in itself became ridiculous and absolutely tedious to view. Two old brothers survive-John Mills and Ralph Richardson. The problem is not only with these 2 nit-wits but their grandsons. When one brother is thought to be killed in a train wreck, the other part of the family things they will fool the other brother's family by chicanery and therefore obtain the money. While all this misery is going on, there's a strangler in London on the loose. The best part of this film was when the screen lit up-The End.

The movie starts off quite well, rather quirky, with colourful and fun characters played occasionally brilliantly by an excellent cast (Caine, Cook, Newman, Dudley), and visually nice, obviously with a decent budget. However, the first half is the part of TWB that sets up the story. The problem arises when the story unfolds, in the second half. That's when the gags take a backseat to a multitude of plot-twists, which become so dominant that you almost forget you're watching a comedy. The writers of TWB would appear to have been so concerned with keeping the story clever (and it is, up to the point when it becomes a muddled mess) that somewhere along the way they must have forgotten to keep the story funny as well. There are numerous surprise twists, too many, in fact. The writers were so twist-happy, so bogged down in keeping this comedy interesting – as opposed to funny – that the twists spiral out of control toward the end, culminating in a not-so-grand finale which is just simplistic slapstick action farce, with people chasing each other and bickering in a buffoonish way. I have never understood this compulsion, this annoying tradition to nearly always end a comedy with a boring action sequence. What the hell is that all about? Hence why so many comedies start off well, sometimes work well in the middle also, but then degenerate into daft and dull chases and shoot-outs whose only purpose is to serve the (more-or-less irrelevant) story. The problem is, who CARES about the story's resolution. A comedy needs to be funny, not resolved. If you can do both, then all the power to you, but get your priorities straight. To watch Caine in an excellent comedy, as opposed to a solid one like TWB, you can do much worse than try "Without A Clue", "Blame It On Rio", or "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". As for Cook and Dudley, watch "Bedazzled", which came out just a year after TWB; it's superior to it and one of the best comedies of the 60s. There are some original ideas, such as the inheritors in a testament not trying to kill their uncle/father/whoever but dedicating their lives to prolonging their life, as is the case with "poor little orphans" Cook and Moore taking care of Richardson's health. (This is not a spoiler, as this is established very early on.)

For some reason, people have this tendency to praise British films to a point that is beyond what they deserve. This certainly is not a bad movie and it does have several interesting and genuinely funny scenes. But, it is not nearly as good as the reviews would indicate. There are several scenes that serve to slow down the story to the point where the movie almost stops dead in it's tracks. The romantic interludes are agonizing in their length and slowness of pace. Far too much is made of Peter Sellers role as the disgraced physician. Yes, he did a good job but, again, his scenes dragged on and were too long. The plot is a very good one and there is some excellent acting by all parties. However, at almost two hours, it is much too long. One half hour could easily have been cut from the length and the pace of the entire film would have been much better.

A madcap cross-country chase for an inherited fortune by two elderly brothers and their many offspring ought to be funnier than this, especially with so many familiar names and faces along for the ride. Viewers with a weakness for the mugging style of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore might be entertained, but others may find themselves longing for more scenes with trivia freak Ralph Richardson, and a bigger part for Peter Sellers, seen all-too briefly as a dotty MD with a fondness for cats. Elsewhere the various routine plot complications and misunderstandings are (at best) fitfully amusing, but the presentation is rarely more than just plain silly, with coy title cards ("Disaster Ensues!") providing a labored chuckle along the way. The script was based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, which would explain the otherwise gratuitous Victorian setting and trappings.

You will never find a better performance by an elderly butler -- John Gielgud, eat your heart out, Arthur doesn't come close -- than Wilfrid Lawson in this wacky, well written flick. Larry Gelbart at his best. Rent it...if you like to laugh, you'll enjoy it!

Wilfrid Lawson was an heroic drinker.Once when starring as the Duke of Buckingham with fellow boozehound Robert Newton in a production of" Richard the third" he stumbled all over the stage,finally tripping over his sword.As he struggled upright a voice from the audience assailed him "You're p*ssed!".He staggered to the footlights and screwed up his eyes,"if you think I'm p*ssed you should see the Duke of Clarence",he shouted,grinning manically.Now he was either almost permanently p*ssed during the making of "The wrong box",or he was the greatest actor I have ever seen.Mr Bryan Forbes assembled some lovely actors of both generations for his movie of greed and deceit amongst the Victorian upper middle classes.I can feel affinity with the Finsburys because my grandmother was the loser in a Tontine and had she not rather inconsiderately fallen under the wheels of a London Omnibus I might have been heir to a fortune.On the other hand I might have ended up the victim of a fiendish plot by disgruntled relatives................. Unfancied at the time of its release this movie has gained enormous piquancy as time has taken its inevitable toll of the stellar cast. Mr Forbes shows his customary affection for the British character with all its eccentricities and pulls off the difficult trick of directing with a firm hand whilst displaying a light touch.Mrs Forbes is a particular beneficiary here,glowingly sweet and innocent. Mr Lawson is the undoubted star of the show,but Mr Sellers and Mr Walters acquit themselves particularly well in support.Miss Courtneidge who graced Mr Forbes' earlier "The L - shaped room" is splendid as the Salvation Army lady. The whole movie glows in that particular "Geneveive" light and colour that epitomises a whole culture of British pictures when the making of them was very much a cottage industry. I will mention Mr Hancock principally because he is so poorly represented on film that any opportunity to see world - weary but defiant persona must be seized with alacrity. There is a self - effacing Englishness about the acting that will appeal to those who feel that "Deuce Bigelow" and "Dodgeball" are just a trifle de trop.

Without question, I would put THE WRONG BOX on any list of the ten best movies ever made. Certainly, to my mind, it is the most perfectly conceived and realized comedy to appear in my lifetime (and I have been around for a long spell). All the performances are flawless, but Peter Sellers's Dr. Pratt is, I believe, the best work he ever did on the screen. His characterization is hilariously funny and, at the same time, heart-wrenchingly poignant. It is worth the price of the film simply to see what he does with the kitten and the thermometer (No, not what you expect). I have always suspected that he and Peter Cook improvised their dialogue and these two brilliant satirists display a give-and-take of such high wit and subtlety that it is probably unique in cinema. An amazing, wonderful, happy motion picture. THE WRONG BOX is a classic.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote novels that studied character and its flaws: Long John Silver in "Treasure Island", Aleck Breck Stewart in "Kidnapped" and "David Balfour", James and Henry Durie in "The Master Of Ballentrae", Dr. Henry Jeckyll/Mr. Edward Hyde.... His best novels show the ambiguity of character. Yet with his interest in melodramatics he should have been a natural for writing mystery and detective stories, like his contemporaries Conan Doyle, Gilbert Chesterton, and Ernest Brahmah. They concentrated their gifts on character developments on their central story figures (Holmes and Watson, Father Brown, Max Carrados), but the basic plot development is what pulls the story along for all of them. Stevenson pulled the story plot to develop the characters instead. Except once - "The Wrong Box". It is Stevenson's spoof on mystery and detective fiction. It was not his novel alone, but the first of three he wrote with his stepson Lloyd Osborne (to whom he told the story of "Treasure Island" before he wrote it down). Stevenson is telling the story of Masterman and Joseph Finsbury, the last two survivors of a special type of insurance form called a "tontine". It's an elaborate wager where a bunch of people put up a sum of money individually, and the last survivor gets the bulk of it. Masterman is home bound, and Joseph is a lively old bore who loves to talk and show off his preposterous knowledge of trivia (Ralph Richardson brings out the fact about the word "whip" when riding with a man holding a "whip"). Masterman (John Mills) lives with his grandson Michael (Michael Caine), and Joseph with his two greedy nephews (Morris and John - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) and his niece Julia (Nanette Newman). Joseph does not really care about the tontine, but Masterman wants it - and is willing to speed the demise of Joseph to do it. Morris and John have to keep Joseph alive (which is not unlikely - he is in good health). Michael is not quite sure what is going on with his irascible grandfather, and Julia just knows she dislikes her two cousins Morris and John (but she really likes Michael). So the stage is set for the comedy. Along the way we meet other characters who are colorful: Dr. Pratt (Peter Sellers) - who at the drop of a hat will tell you about how he fell from medical grace to the backstreet he resides in; Peacock (Wilfred Lawson), Masterman's butler, who makes the average turtle look like it's turbocharged; the police Detective (Tony Hancock) - who can't put together a coherent idea if his life depended on it; and ...the Bournmouth Strangler (the story is from 1888, so we can guess who this character is based on). It is a marvelous send-up on Victorian England, taking in the empire (notice the beginning when we see the demises of various members of the tontine), to the problems of railway traffic, talkative relatives, and body disposal in London in the 1880s. That the novel is not quite like the film does not matter (Michael is not a medical student but a clever barrister in the story, and John's relationship with Morris deteriorates in the story due to some money troubles), but this does not matter. It is a fun movie and well worth seeing.