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At-A-Glance Film Reviews

The Wrong Box (1966)

Rating

[5.0]

Reviews and Comments

One of my favorite comedies, The Wrong Box combines subtlety, slapstick, and plain weirdness in to a hilariously silly, demented film. Because of the variety of types of humor, almost everyone will find something funny, but few will laugh at everything. Theres slapstick action as someone gets tangled in bed sheets trying to bump someone off, and there are subtle one-liners played so straight you're liable to miss them entirely if you aren't paying attention. Best are the caricatures of people we know from every day life, their quirks taken to such an extreme, we can't help but laugh. John Mills plays the feisty, grumpy old curmudgeon; Ralph Richardson is the carefree yet oblivious gentleman with an unending supply of useless trivia; Peter Cook is the nasty, greedy relative; Dudley Moore is the consummate ladies' man; Peter Sellers is the eccentric forgetful (and sleepy) doctor fond of cats; Wilfrid Lawson is the world's slowest butler, both in action and in speech; Michael Caine is the shy, nervous scholar who only wants what's best for everyone; and Nanette Newman plays the young, pure, innocent, flightly next door neighbor. The whole gang is thrown together in a plot with a slew of comic twists sure to entertain those who understand some of its bizarre humor and delight those who understand all of it. And it is a remarkable fact...

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