The Family Jewels

Lewis could never be a father, but here he plays seven uncles from whom a rich industrialist's orphaned daughter must pick a daddy. Parodying a gangster film, it's a tour de force of Lewisian disguise, slowly unfolding gags, and monstrous sentimentality. A morose clown, a Terry-Thomas style pilot, a gaga photographer, and an incomprehensible old sea captain all figure; but nothing so funny as when the gangster uncle sheds his 'funny mask' disguise to reveal a worse real face beneath. Ups and downs on the laughter scale, perhaps, but there's more than meets the eye. DMacp.