Watch The Palm Beach Story For Free

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Blistering performances.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

F. Scott Fitzgerald told Ernest Hemingway "the rich are different from you and me." For Preston Sturges, "different" hardly covers it. In his "The Palm Beach Story," they are out of their minds.Rich people can't wait to give Geraldine Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) their money. Sure, she's beautiful, but she's also married to the possessive if indigent Tom (Joel McCrea). Deciding that he's better off without her as a "milestone" around his neck, and that she's certainly better off finding more crazy rich guys to give her dough, she leaves for a quickie divorce in Palm Beach, Florida, with Tom in hot pursuit.Perhaps Sturges' dizziest comedy, "Palm Beach Story" is a clever, grown- up entertainment, feet quite detached from the ground. Just imagine how the Paramount brass reacted after screening the first two-and-a-half minutes of this, a galloping credit sequence having nothing to do with the plot of the next 80 minutes. It's certainly amusing, but even knowing what Sturges was setting up here doesn't make me sure it was the right approach.Sturges is called the anti-Capra for the way he played with the Frank Capra formula where little people win against the mighty with equal parts pluck and sentimentality. If Capra was the enlightened communitarian, Sturges was the eccentric patrician, and "Palm Beach Story" his paean to capitalist endeavor at its warped and wackiest.The capitalists with whom the Jeffers come across are a cross-section of craziness that proves money talks loudest when it makes the least sense. There's the "Wienie King" (Robert Dudley) who gives Gerry $700 and a warning to lay off his product if she wants to live longer. There's the Ale And Quail Club, who gift her passage to Florida on their train and then scare her away by holding target practice in the club car. Finally, you have the Hackensackers, a brother and sister whose oil fortune has completely divorced them from any practical reality, and who settle upon the Jeffers as ideal companions for their cloud-cuckoo land.As John D. Hackensacker (Rudy Vallée) tells his sister (Mary Astor), "You know Maude, somebody meeting you for the first time, not knowing you were cracked, might get the wrong impression."Whimsy predominates over everything else in "The Palm Beach Story;" the one quality everyone possesses equally. "I like peace but I ain't morbid about it," is how a cop warns Tom to watch his step. Thanked for his "chivalry" by Gerry, a ticket attendant replies: "Anytime from 8 to 12."Watching all this zaniness is pretty charming, even if the story it decorates is somewhat undernourished. Neither Jeffers is that engaging as personalities go; hard enough as it is to believe, the richie-rich Hackensackers come off more vulnerable and worth your time, what with their personality quirks and their weird need for love.Sturges' taste for story detours is on full display here; the Ale And Quail Club taxes your patience with non-stop singing, barking, and shooting, not to mention all the Sturges stock players putting in their appearances. Sturges found William Demarest funny for some reason, giving him center stage in the movie's trailer. At least his part in the film isn't so much as that.But what a clever ending, all the more so for being so utterly random! There's a line of thinking that "The Palm Beach Story" is screwball comedy, but it's way beyond that to me. Sturges throws so many balls in the air there's a bit of wonder when he manages to catch a few.The object is entertainment, and it succeeds in that well enough. It also seems there's a lesson about capitalism tied up somewhere, that leaving people to make their own ways in life is the best course to take, no matter how mixed up they are. Does it work in life? No idea, but it certainly seems to here!

Writer-director Preston Sturges' "The Palm Beach Story" (1942) posits that people are so unused to good fortune that when it's dropped right into their laps, they have no idea what to do with it. And those people include the movie's audience.The movie begins with a whirlwind sequence of exposition (set to a cockeyed version of "The William Tell Overture") which seems to explain absolutely nothing. It's Sturges' nose-thumbing at movies which have nothing *but* exposition. He seems to be saying, "Must we explain everything from the get-go? Have some patience on this trip, and I'll get you there." Soon enough, we meet Tom (Joel McCrea), a frustrated construction designer, and Gerry (Claudette Colbert), his equally frustrated wife. They live in a posh apartment but are constantly dodging bill collectors, until Gerry's chance run-in with a meat mogul known as "The Weenie King." (You think that's flouting the censors? Wait until you see Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek [1944].) Gerry tells The Weenie King of her financial plight, and he gives her a wad of money to help her, just because she's so darned cute. (Once you see Claudette Colbert, this will seem a little more plausible.) Far from feeling relieved, Tom is displeased that Gerry can solve their financial woes with only a little flirting. Gerry counters that everything in life is "about sex" (Note to censors: Flout-flout),and eventually she leaves Tom to set out on her own, solely to prove that she can get whatever she needs whatever she needs in life just by being a woman.It's never shown whether Gerry proves this to herself or not. But along the way, she meets some memorable characters: the members of The Ale and Quail Club (headed by Sturges veteran William Demarest); an oft-married millionairess (delightful Mary Astor) and her foreign-speaking boyfriend of the moment; and a soft-spoken yachtsman (Rudy Vallee), who patiently endures Gerry's systematic breaking of his every pair of pince-nez's. All of these people love to talk, and Sturges obliges them with enough epigrams for a swank New Year's bash.And for those who think Sturges couldn't direct as well as he wrote, I recommend the scene where a tipsy Tom and Gerry discuss their impending divorce. The scene begins with Tom trying to unzip the back of Gerry's dress for her, and it ends as one of the swooniest love scenes it has ever been my pleasure to witness.And just when you think the movie has run out of steam, Sturges pulls a happy ending out of his hat that has you laughing through the closing credits. Smart and smarter--now, *there's* a trend Hollywood should have pursued.

I hate to speak ill of any movie made before my time that's regarded as a classic and is an AFI award winner(# 77 on it's 100 funniest movies list),but this film just did not resonate with me at all.I found the plot utterly ridiculous.The two leads were incompatible.I hate to use the word "stupid",but it's the only word I can muster for the film's ending.This was my first viewing of any film starring most of the cast here,and while I'm sure they were great in other films,there was just no magic here,at least not for me.I can think of a few films that are more deserving of a placement in the above mentioned AFI list than this.

This being only the second screwball comedy I had ever viewed, I have to say for the most part that I enjoyed it. The acting, while a bit dated, made for an enjoyable experience. The plot was sadly similar to the previous film that i watched: My Man Godfrey; however, with obvious unexpected twists and turns along the way. Even though the plot was similar to the previous film, the story was itself very unique. Everything from the unexpected second appearance of the "weenie king," when he helps tom Jeffreys, to the clearly non-traditional ending made this film worth watching. While it did drag a bit certain parts, with the short run time of only 88 minutes, the slower parts of the film seem to fly by. The music in the film added a much needed extra touch that helped to really captivate me at key or even dull moments, for instance, the ballroom or balcony scenes. The ensemble of the ale and quail club members was for me the most enjoyable part of the film, however, the, for lack of a better term, indentured servant serving the drinks and throwing the crackers for trap shooting made me a bit uncomfortable. Obviously there were many things in the 1940's that are very different today, but to see the way that African Americans were typecast and portrayed was a bit disturbing to me personally. That aside, another item that struck a chord with me about the film was the fact that Gerry makes it through most of the film simply by the grace of her good looks. The message that the film is sending with her behavior sets forth the notion that if a woman id pretty enough, life can be easy for her, which seriously degrades and takes away from women's equal rights, at least in my opinion. In summation, while this film had several parts that were a bit uncouth for my taste, it is hard to ignore a true and classic tale of love, passion, and overcoming the odds.