I think I've mentioned on multiple occasions in the past my belief that early sound era actor George Arliss could take any sort of trifling material given him and make it worth watching based pretty much on his performance alone. A later actor who has a similar effect on me is Charles Coburn. Coburn's watchability is very much on display in Unexpected Uncle.
Anne Shirley plays Kathleen Brown, a shop girl at some sort of hoity-toity shop in Palm Beach, FL, where all the rich people go for the winter. One of those wealthy people is Johnny Kerrigan (James Craig), who tried flirting with Kathleen while she was on the job, something which got her fired. Passing by is Seton Mansley (Charles Coburn). He hears Kathleen's sob story and marches her straight back into the store to see the manager, telling the manager that he's a big shareholder in the store and the manager will never hear the end of it if Kathleen, his niece isn't rehired. The gambit works.
Seton then tells Kathleen that if she needs him again, she can find him at the Seminole Trailer Park, these being the days when the trailers were still mobile as in The Long, Long, Trailer and not like the latter-day stereotype of a trailer park. But still, it's a sign that Seton is likely not what he was claiming to be back in the store. He's probably living off his savings, whatever they are, as well as making some extra money betting on horseshoes, at which he is a whiz (and which is some foreshadowing that horseshoes are going to come into play as a plot point later in the movie).
Sure enough, Kathleen comes looking for Seton when Johnny invites her out to dinner. "Uncle" Seton comes along, meeting some of Johnny's rich friends, including his former fiancée Carol (Renee Haal). Although she and Johnny are still friends, Carol broke off the engagement because every time push came to shove, Johnny was more married to his business than he could ever be to any woman. Carol warns Kathleen that the same is going to happen to her if she gets into a relationship with Johnny.
But Kathleen is in love. Johnny has come down to Palm Beach to try to get away from that business up north, even drinking himself into a stupor and getting into a DUI crash. Kathleen tries to extricate him from the situation, but it blows up B-movie style into an alleged kidnapping, with Johnny, Kathleen, "Uncle" Seton, and Carol attempting to resolve matters. Johnny has been called home on business, but Seton's smart enough to get himself and Kathleen on Johnny's plane, where Johnny proposes to Kathleen!
So when they get back to Johnny's palatial home, they're married, which is a big deal. But it also turns out that Carol knew what she was talking about, and Johnny, now home again, shows just how much more he cares about his business than any woman. Can Kathleen make Johnny love her? Can he balance his interests like a normal businessman? With Seton there, I think you can figure out the answer.
Unexpected Uncle runs about 67 minutes, so there's not a whole lot here in terms of plot. It's pretty easy to figure out where things are going to go, and when those horseshoes are going to come back into play. But it turns out to be an appealing little B movie, mostly because Coburn brings so much energy to the proceedings that you just can't help but like the characters, even Johnny, who like James Stewart's stuffy family in You Can't Take It With You, just needs to learn how to relax. The movie's theme that it's either work or pleasure and that ultimately you can't balance both, doesn't quite ring true, but the movie as a whole works for what it is, which is a B movie that never had any pretentions of being remembered 80 years later.
Unexpected Uncle was released by RKO; as such it wound up in the library of films to which Ted Turner acquired the rights and which form the backbone of the Warner Archive collection. Unexpected Uncle is one of the many movies that has gotten a DVD release this way.
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