Genre Guesstimation – The Palm Beach Story (1942)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s Genre has been chosen by Steve of The Movie Movie Blog Blog and it is Screwball Comedies

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Sep by sending them to screwballsteve@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Screwball Comedies.…

“That’s one of the tragedies of this life – that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous.” – John D. Hackensacker III

Number of Times Seen – 1 (6 Sep 2018)

Brief Synopsis – A happily married couple decide to get divorced when their luck changes.

My Take on it – I decided that in order to make my guest choices of the Genre for the Genre Grandeur series more personal (and expand my own personal horizons of these genres), I will take a recommendation from my guest for a film to watch for this Genre Guesstimation series.

This movie was Steve’s choice for me to watch.

The premise itself is quite interesting and I liked the way that Director Preston Sturges manages to create a modern day Comedy of Errors with this story.

He does a wonderful job giving us a story where we think we understand everything and then Sturges pulls a rabbit out of a hat to change our perception of things completely.

Joel McRea and Claudette Colbert have great chemistry together in this film and their back and forth works quite well the entire time.

The dialogue is quite enjoyable to listen to and the way that they wield innuendos throughout is quite impressive.

My one problem with this film is the fact that it was hard to like or even care for the characters which is essential for this kind of movie.

Bottom Line – Interesting premise that works quite well as a comedy of errors. I liked the fact that we seem to think that we understand everything that is going on and then Sturges changes things at the end by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. McCrea and Colbert have great chemistry throughout and the way that the movie moves along works quite well.  The dialogue is quite enjoyable and the way that they use innuendos in this film is perfectly done.  The only problem with this film is that the characters don’t seem as likeable as one would hope for in such a film. Recommended

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Preston Sturges’s perfectionism slowed down production. He refused to move on to close-ups until he had a perfect master shot, and he would stop and do a new take if an actor changed a word of the script. William Demarest, who appeared in eight Sturges films, would later say, “He had a great memory. If you changed anything, he’d say, ‘Wait a minute,’ and, goddamn, he was right.” (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Comes close, but the story just doesn’t work as well as it could have.

Rating – Globe Worthy (7/10)

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