The Palm Beach Story

Directed by Preston Sturges, The Palm Beach Story follows a couple (Claudette Colbert’s Gerry and Joel McCrea’s Tom) as they encounter complications on the way to a potential divorce. It’s appealing subject matter that’s slowly-but-surely squandered by Sturges, as the filmmaker, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a progressively lackluster endeavor that contains little in the way of appealing, attention-grabbing attributes – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a near total lack of laughs and McCrea’s frustratingly one-note turn as the perpetually grumpy Tom. There’s little doubt, as well, that The Palm Beach Story‘s distressing failure is due in no small part to a thoroughly interminable stretch set aboard a train, as Gerry encounters (and attempts to avoid) a group of boisterous hunters who eventually take to shooting up one of the cars (ie it’s wildly over-the-top stuff that brings the proceedings to a dead stop). And while the picture improves within its second half, particularly with the introduction of Rudy Vallée’s affable John D. Hackensacker III, The Palm Beach Story, despite the inclusion of a gleefully (and entertainingly) broad final few minutes, ultimately comes off as an incongruous misfire within Sturges’ predominantly agreeably body of work.

** out of ****