How do you make a turkey with a cast that includes Jean Harlow, William Powell, and Franchot Tone, and has music by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein? It happened, in 1935, with Reckless, an unfunny, almost incomprehensibly bad melodrama from MGM. The script is terrible; we don't even know why Harlow starts the film in jail. Powell plays a drunk who is in love with Harlow, spouting gibberish for long, embarrassing scenes. Harlow struts her stuff in a couple of awkward dance numbers. (Even Ruby Keeler was a better dancer.) The music is just awful. There is no comic relief. No wit anywhere. What was the director thinking? How did the best studio in the golden age of movies produce something this dreadful? Leonard Maltin gave it two stars out of four. He was far too generous.
Review of Reckless
