Double Wedding

A stuffy woman (Myrna Loy) falls for the free-spirited artist (William Powell) she deemed unworthy of her younger sister.

Double Wedding is a disappointment. While it does pair the always entertaining William Powell and Myrna Loy, they’re both miscast and working from an unfunny script.

Powell suffers the worst, as he neither looks nor feels the part of a bohemian artist that lives in a trailer parked outside a bar. It’s a part that gives him little opportunity to flash his urbane charm in-character, much to the film’s detriment. Amazingly, according to the IMDb, Powell’s fiancée, Jean Harlow died during production, though watching him on-screen, you’d never know.

For her part, Loy fares somewhat better, but her character is ultimately much too rigid to allow her the freedom to charm the audience the way she does in her best outings. Again, it’s the film that ultimately suffers.

Topping it all off is the lazy direction of Richard Thorpe with lacks any sense of urgency. As a result, even at only 87 minutes, Double Wedding feels overlong. While it shows flashes of inspiration in the form of a good line here or there, it’s mostly a humdrum formula picture that’s often pretty boring.