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The Palm Beach Story on DVD (1942)

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Average rating: 70%
4155121720109
3.5
from 154 members
 
Starring: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea
Director: Preston Sturges
Studio: UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK
Run time: 84 mins
Certificate: U
Genres: Romance
Languages: English
Released: 01/02/2005

Brief synopsis of The Palm Beach Story

An inventor needs cash to develop his big idea. His wife, who loves him, decides to raise it for him by divorcing him and marrying a millionaire.

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Critics Reviews

Rating of 4 stars out of 5 Radio Times

Made by the brilliant writer/director of satirical comedy, Preston Sturges, The Palm Beach Story stars Claudette Colbert who, by the early 1940s, had become firmly established as Hollywood's queen of romantic comedy. Watching her antics and listening to her way with a witty line in the face of this film's ever-escalating absurdities, it's easy to see why. Teamed with Joel McCrea (star of Sturges's famed Sullivan's Travels), Colbert is the young wife who decides that her poverty-stricken husband would be better off without her. So she leaves for Florida to seek a divorce and a rich man. How she gets there, the consequences of her meeting with a prissy, eccentric bachelor billionaire (Rudy Vallee), and McCrea's response to the situation supply the action. It's worth sitting out some tedious early sequences to enjoy the delightful romp that follows.

Rating of 3 stars out of 4 Halliwell's Film Guide

Flighty comedy, inconsequential in itself, but decorated with scenes, characters and zany touches typical of its creator, here at his most brilliant if uncontrolled.

Time Out

Sturges was riding high in the early '40s, writing and directing comedies of such density and wit that a moment's... Read more on www.timeout.com

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Members Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Rated - 5 starsClassic screwball comedy

David Henderson from London, Britain. , 18/07/2007

Sturgess is the master of this genre and Palm Beach is one of the best. This film ranks alongside such greats as The Lady Eve & Bringing Up Baby. Anyway there are lots of classic one liners in the movie and quite a lot of visual gags - which usually I am not too keen on but work here.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsClassic screwball

Paul Harland from Devon, England , 14/12/2005

Plot and characters unbelievable (of course!) - executed with panache and general wackiness!

  2 out of 4 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsA classic comedy from the absolute master

Savage from London, England [Highly rated reviewer] , 31/10/2006

The most modern, most zany, most satisfying comedy you are likely to see in many a year. Driven by writer-director Sturges' usual twin obsessions, money and sex, the wacky plot has Claudette Colbert leave her mad-inventor (and much-loved) husband, Joel McCrea, because she reckons if she can find a wealthy man to marry, he will give her the money to finance McCrea's daft schemes. And such a man appears in the person of Rudy Vallee (after Colbert has stepped on his face a couple of times) - whose sister (Mary Astor) is a crazed nympho who wants to get her teeth into McCrea.

All that, plus the Ale and Quail Club destroying a train, the Weenie King discoursing on sexuality, and an ending that wraps everything up far too neatly to be believed. The only reason you might not like this film is if you are dead.

  1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 2 starsOkay.

A customer from Engaland , 29/11/2006

Ok rather than nothing.

  2 out of 4 people found this review helpful
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Most Recent Reviews

Rated - 2 starsSilly

A customer from Anstruther , 12/04/2007

This is such a preposterous piece of fluff that it's barely worth reviewing. A squawking -at some points almost unbearably noisy- 'comedy' that attempts to convince 1940s gold-digging flibbertygibbets that they'd be better off sticking with their husbands. A great, camp scene where the lovely Claudette Colbert is 'reluctantly' being fitted for a 90 piece trousseau by a benevolent millionaire, but apart from that, a lot of boring nonsense.

  2 out of 5 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsA classic comedy from the absolute master

Savage from London, England [Highly rated reviewer] , 31/10/2006

The most modern, most zany, most satisfying comedy you are likely to see in many a year. Driven by writer-director Sturges' usual twin obsessions, money and sex, the wacky plot has Claudette Colbert leave her mad-inventor (and much-loved) husband, Joel McCrea, because she reckons if she can find a wealthy man to marry, he will give her the money to finance McCrea's daft schemes. And such a man appears in the person of Rudy Vallee (after Colbert has stepped on his face a couple of times) - whose sister (Mary Astor) is a crazed nympho who wants to get her teeth into McCrea.

All that, plus the Ale and Quail Club destroying a train, the Weenie King discoursing on sexuality, and an ending that wraps everything up far too neatly to be believed. The only reason you might not like this film is if you are dead.

  1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
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