A star-studded, multi-coloured, expensive-looking romp typical of the kind they liked to make in the mid-to-late sixties, The Wrong Box ticks all the right boxes: high production values, sumptuous period decor, modishly mordant humour and a comically labyrinthine plot allowing plenty of scope for scene-stealing cameos. There’s a cornucopia of postwar British comedy talent here – Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Tony Hancock, Gerald Sim, John Le Mesurier, Irene Handl and, upstaging everyone, Wilfrid Lawson – all vying for the film’s comic crown.
It’s a good-natured tale of a nefarious band of relatives and acquaintances battling it out to prove that one of two elderly brothers — survivors of a tontine (a long-term investment plan) — has outlived the other and thus has a claim on the fortune. Director Bryan Forbes has some fun showing how the less fortunate tontine investors have been dispatched — one poor soul is fatally wounded by Queen Victoria as he is being knighted — and John Mills and Ralph Richardson (no less!) go hell-for-leather at their respective roles as the dotty old siblings. At the centre of it all are Michael Caine and Nanette Newman (Mrs Bryan Forbes) as two sweetly repressed lovers from the opposite sides of the warring family. In the midst of all the comic heavyweights, Caine surprisingly manages to pull off a subtly humorous performance of hapless innocence.
The film also looks great – the evocation of biscuit-tin Victorian London is elegantly achieved, and Gerry Turpin’s outdoor cinematography uniquely captures a crisp English springtime look. And there’s a great score by the ever-reliable John Barry.
The Wrong Box may owe more than a little debt to Robert Hamer’s classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, but with its irrepressible optimism and lively extravagance, it is required Christmas/Easter/Bank Holiday (delete as appropriate) viewing, and a much-needed antidote to credit crunch woes from a far-off time when Britain seemed to be brimming with self-confidence.
An all-star Victorian romp in which two brothers will stop at nothing to outlive each other and collect a huge family inheritance. Cue mistaken identities, forged death certificates, bodies dumped in the Thames, and a spectacular hearse race that owes more than a little to Ben Hur!
After what seems an endless wait, Bryan Forbes' wonderfully, if underrated, film, "The Wrong Box" finally is making it to DVD in August,2007.
Woefully unrecogni... more >
After what seems an endless wait, Bryan Forbes' wonderfully, if underrated, film, "The Wrong Box" finally is making it to DVD in August,2007.
Woefully unrecognised as the classic comedy it is, the screenplay alone would guarantee it a place in any film archivist favourite comedies. Superbly photographed in glorious colour (the scene where the Victorian maiden Nanette Newman looks swoonishly at Michael Caine's upper arm and its golden hairs is in itself a wonder to behold).
"The Wrong Box" also draws out some of their greatest comic performances on screen from John Mills, Ralph Richardson and and Tony Hancock. And there is a truly unforgettable cameo by Peter Sellers, as a downatheel solicitor who blots his legal work with a cat kept in his desk's drawer.
The film's only drawback, and it is a very minor one is an over-indulgent patch with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, which is poorly written and even more poorly played by a normally excellent team.
One highlight, and there are many in this British gem, is the coach trip with a wonderfully droning Ralph Richardson and a driver driven to dementia by bordom.
Surely this is the best film Forbes ever made and that includes an oeuvre that most other film-makers can only dream of. A film to revel in! (Tom Darragh) < less
"The wrong pace" By John Westbrooke on 5th May 2009
Directors like Richard Lester or Blake Edwards would have played this as flat-out farce. Forbes deliberately slows things down as the lovers Caine and Newman swoon ove... more >
Directors like Richard Lester or Blake Edwards would have played this as flat-out farce. Forbes deliberately slows things down as the lovers Caine and Newman swoon over glimpses of each other's ankles. That much of it works, but he has trouble finding business for his all-star cast to attend to. Sellers and his cats are fun, the first time; a second scene adds nothing new. Dud and Pete do the same thing over and over. Hancock is brought on late to expostulate a bit of plot but essentially has no role at all. Even allowing for the slow-motion swooning, this could have done with quite a lot of pruning. The high points are Richardson's serene lack of self-awareness, Caine's timid innocence, and Lawson's pickled butler; some blithely surreal shots (a pair of crashed trains forming an inverted V in the background), and the memorable intertitle 'ALONE WITH HER AT LAST IN A ROOM FULL OF EGGS'. Low point: even with a DVD transfer they still haven't photoshopped out the notorious TV aerials. < less
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