So much average

Just perfect...

Boring

A different way of telling a story

When the film begins, an elderly man is dying...and he commits a prank on his way out of this world. But it's not his final prank...that comes in his will. When it's read to his four relatives, they're each told they'd receive 50,000 pounds...provided each do something odd and specifically tailored to them. His haughty sister is told that in order to collect, she must become a domestic and serve as one for a year. His cousin, the writer, must act out his dime novels...and get himself incarcerated for 28 days. His meek relative must hold up a bank with a fake gun...and his playboy cousin must marry the first woman with which he strikes up a conversation! And, all of these must be completed without telling anyone why they are doing it! What made this one especially good is that, for the most part, the folks all learned a positive lesson from all this and there were also a few laughs along the way. Worth seeing and clever.

Hugh Griffith is rich British guy Henry Russell. He croaks and leaves his fortune to his family, if they can accomplish certain ironic tasks that they find repulsive. (Griffith was HILARIOUS in "Start the Revolution" in 1970!) Fay Compton had started in the silents and had a long career on stage and film... was in The Haunting. One of Audrey H's early films -- she was only about 22. Only has a small role as a cigarette girl in this one. A whole bunch of "siblings", British actors from way back, who are unfamiliar to most of us. A tad dry, but has a good, steady plot. We watch as the various stories unfold, with varying degrees of success. One just can't get arrested, no matter how hard he tries. Some twists at the end... some are successful in their tasks, some are not. It's entertaining at least. Kind of a precursor to "Easy Money", with Rodney Dangerfield, but this one has a different ending. Directed by Mario Zampi, who worked with writer Michael Pertwee on seven films! Pertwee had written the screenplay for the comedies "A Funny Thing Happened..." in 1966 and "Mouse on the Moon" ! On Turner Classics. Pretty Good !

Alastair Sim would make a perfect undertaker. With those Bassett-hound eyes and that mournful hand-wringing manner, he's made to preside over the Slumber Room and ease you into the priciest model. So, it never fails to surprise me that he's also a first-rate comedic actor, maybe even the last word in droll comedy. And he pulls off the humor so slyly, with just a minor change of expression. What a wonderfully artistic contrast he is to today's rub- your-nose-in-it brand of comedy. This is not his best vehicle, but the movie does have a clever premise and a couple of good set-ups—the shoplifting sequence, and any scene with Joyce Grenfell. The sketches, however, are more amusing than hilarious, and the humor never really peaks out in a climactic way. It's also perhaps one of the sweetest comedies on record, insisting that the key to happiness is pairing up with another, even in the case of those two cranky old people. That's the wisdom behind the will's requirement— old man Russell makes each beneficiary experience what is most missing from his or her life, and in the process, become a better and happier person.Note the shot taken early on at America's brand of hard-boiled detective fiction, probably then making inroads into popular British fiction. So, by combining America's street- tough style with traditional British prose, writer Russell (Sim) produces something amusingly ridiculous, like "Petal arched her alabaster arm above her patrician brow in a moment of precise exasperation before he smacked her in the kisser." Anyway, I thought those passages were both funny and cleverly offbeat. All in all, this little comedy may be no knee-slapper, but it is rather sweetly memorable.

What a great British comedy. First of all it was cool to see Fay Compton from "The Hauting" and "Orson Welles' Otello" again. The script is original and very funny in a lighthearted and intelligent way and the actors are all just great. I liked the writer and his funny secretary best. His spouse was really funny, too and her character made me wonder what Hollywood would make out of it in a contemporary comedy: I guess they would turn her character into "a lesbian", you know, one of their silly clichés. This movie is so much better than those dumb primitive comedies Hollywood treats its viewers to! See it if you have the chance.