The character of Harvey Fairchild could have been written for Jack Lemmon. Harvey's acute hypochondria begets the kind of comedy of desperation in which Lemmon's expertise has become a byword. Approaching his 60th birthday, Harvey thinks he has blood pressure, heart trouble, impotency and allergies galore and his doctor can't find a thing wrong with him. Harvey doesn't exactly seem a true-life character but, if he were, Lemmon wouldn't be able to get so much anguished fun out of him. What he doesn't know is that his wife (Julie Andrews) really does have something to worry about - a throat tumour that may be malignant or benign. If all this sounds less than a barrel of laughs, there are times when that's true. But, in between, the script is peppered with enough amusing scenes and one-liners to pull it through. Particularly nice are Lemmon's story about how to make a lobster die happy, and his anguish over a dream where 'I built the world's tallest building so's I could jump off it.' The film's a family affair - Lemmon's son and Andrews' daughter are in it and her husband, Blake Edwards, directed. But it's the seniors' show, with Lemmon's wife Felicia Farr enjoying a nice little vignette as a voraciously seductive fortune-teller.

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