Rich and Strange begins with an extended sequence, mostly sans dialogue, which introduces us to a man's life. He's a white-collar minion of the paper-shuffling set where plainly-dressed worker bees, at the stroke of six p.m., alight in a swarm toward the outer office door, descend into the dark, rain-swept streets, trek downward into the bowels of the London underground to be packed like sardines in overcrowded subway cars. The man arrives home to a cramped flat with a cat prowling the dinner table, a wife busy sewing herself up a new dress and, after turning on the "wireless" for an evening's entertainment, the announcement that "Mr. Baker will give his twelfth talk on accountancy in three minutes".

          Something in the man snaps. He wants a change, the man declares in a sudden fit of temper. He wants "…some life --life, I tell you!"

          "What you want, dear," his wife replies, gently patting his knee, "is some little liver pills."

          It's a brilliant sequence that sets the scene perfectly. What a shame that the rest of Rich and Strange isn't dispatched with nearly the same --and by that I mean none of the same-- economy and wit.

           Rich and Strange is a slow boat to Singapore, and back again, with a sophomoric, under-realized tale of marital infidelity wandering about aimlessly in the vicinity of where one would normally expect to find a plot. Only late in the film does a shipwreck and rescue-by-Chinese-junk briefly enliven the story before it's back to the dreary, old flat in dreary, old England.

          Our "heroes", for want of a better term, are Fred and Elen Hill (played by Henry Kendall and Joan Barry, respectively) who's boring lives are interrupted by a rich uncle who has heard of Fred's growing ennui and who decides to hand over a large chunk of money to him now rather than make poor Fred wait and suffer until Rich Uncle has outlived his use of the stuff. No further explanation is given for this sudden outburst of generosity, but I suppose that sort of thing happens all the time, over in England.

          Fred and Elen waste no time taking advantage of the offer and are soon off to Paris, where they get good and plastered, then off to Marseilles, where they board what turns out to be the SS Marital Infidelity. Elen falls for lonely Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont), Fred for a gold digging adventuress posing as a princess (spicy Betty Amann).

          By the time Fred and Elen leave Singapore they are back together. By the time the two have returned to England they are right back where they started, in more ways than one.