You’ll probably need to watch Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story at least twice if you’ve never seen it before. The second time will be to catch some of the rapid-fire dialog you missed the first time out from laughing so hard as your brain attempts to keep up with the wild setups and payoffs the movie hits you with. Sturges’ gift for well-timed comedy direction comes through excellently in yet another gem he also wrote and you have to give the man major credit for letting his actors fly through scenes (and sometimes the scenery) as if they were tossed around sets by small cyclones. Of course, having some great actors throwing those lines around helps quite a bit… Continue reading
Random Film of the Week(end): The Palm Beach Story
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Sure, that title may make it sound a little too much like some overly pompous religious themed film, but director Preston Sturges’ great, outrageous 1944 comedy is still one of the more hilariously subversive Hollywood movies of that era when the Hays Code was clamping down hard on movies and forcing directors to come up with all sorts of means to get around some pretty stupid and strict rules. For some reason, those censors must have been asleep at the wheel as The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is still one of the funniest movies ever made, period. If your eyebrow is hovering above your head like a skeptical cartoon character, go rent or yank out from your movie collection Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up and watch this afterward. I bet you’re laughing harder at the older film, so pony up five cents now and mail it my way after you lose that bet…
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