If I Had a Million

The title tells all in this episodic entertainment (variations on the theme of what happens to assorted characters each left a million dollars by a wealthy eccentric), written by eighteen pairs of hands and directed by seven, from cool geniuses like Lubitsch to jolly hacks like Humberstone. The famous Lubitsch episode in which Charles Laughton's mild-mannered clerk gives his boss the raspberry now warrants nothing stronger than a wet smile, but the WC Fields episode is still fun (he goes on a joyride in various old cars, bashing them vengefully against every passing road-hog). The non-comic sequences, however, are all very painful; this is one of those curate's eggs with far more curate than egg.