18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Region 2 PAL release of The Wrong Box, July 27, 2008
This review is from: La Caja de las Sorpresas (The Wrong Box) [Region 2] (DVD)
To anyone familiar with The Wrong Box, this hilarious British classic needs no booster. To anyone not familiar with the film, its cast is stellar and its script divine. The result is one of the funniest purely comedic works in the history of film. Sadly, The Wrong Box has not yet been released on DVD even in the UK, much less here in the USA in a Region 1 edition. This Region 2 PAL release from Spain is nice - the subtitles are removable -- but it presents the film in the "standard" 4:3 aspect ratio, not the 1.66:1 widescreen aspect in which it was shot. Still, this is a comparatively minor flaw when compared to the alternative -- having no DVD copy of The Wrong Box available at all. Here's hoping this honored classic will be released in the proper widescreen format both in England and also as a Region 1 edition in the USA and Canada -- and soon.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Now this is a comedy!, July 28, 2009
This review is from: La Caja de las Sorpresas (The Wrong Box) [Region 2] (DVD)
The Wrong Box (Bryan Forbes, 1966)
Robert Louis Stevenson, in the main, wrote adventure stories, and thus most film adaptations of his work have been of his adventure stories. But the wonderful director Bryan Forbes (Séance on a Wet Afternoon) decided to try his hand at a Stevenson comedy, and The Wrong Box is the result. Highbrow high-jinks, lighthearted mystery, and some of the best comic actors of the time make this one an overlooked gem.
The movie starts with one class in an exclusive boys' school, each backed by his parents, entering into a tontine (a kind of lottery); each parent stakes an amount of money, the sum of which is put into trust for the children, and the last surviving member of the class gets the prize. Fast-forward eighty years, though a montage where we see the other members of the class dying in amusing ways, and only two of them are left. Both are on their deathbeds, and thus their heirs are scrambling to keep the scions alive until the other one dies. All well and good, but eventually, a few of them come up with the idea: what happens if you just get rid of the other one first? And thus the high-jinks begin.
It's silly, it's needlessly labyrinthine, and man, is it amusing. All of that is thanks to the incredible level of comic talent to be found in this movie, which includes Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (the premier comedy team of the time), Michael Caine, Jeremy Lloyd, James Villiers, Nicholas Parsons, John Mills, Nanette Newman, Gerald Sim, Andrea Allan, and the incomparable Peter Sellers in what may be the funniest role of his career. Sure, thirty minutes into this you'll be completely lost, but who cares? You'll be too busy laughing to notice. *** ½
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Widescreen version available in the US at last, April 1, 2011
THE WRONG BOX is a cult favorite in my family, to the point where lines from it may be quoted out of context without explanation. ("Oh would you sir?") Paid $60 for it in 1984 when it came out on VHS. Been waiting years for a proper DVD release. I've bought bootleg DVD's copied from the laserdisc version (not widescreen) and the PAL version (also not widescreen). Now, at long last, we fans have a legitimate US DVD. And it's widescreen! Picture and sound are both top quality.
I'll leave it to others to comment on the film itself--when you're a member of the WRONG BOX cult, the film needs no justification. We watch for the little moments now. Peter Cook almost unable to keep from laughing during his scenes with Peter Sellers. Sellers holding up a graduated cylinder when Cook, prompting Dr. Pratt to write his name, says "P". The headlines on the newspaper about the Bournmouth Strangler. The period details outside the Crescent. It's all there, and all newly appreciable on the home screen.
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