Reckless (1935)

...this movie rapidly descends into maudlin melodrama that is practically unwatchable. The movie starts out with promise with a feisty Granny Lesie (May Robson) pulling a rather hung over Ned Riley (William Powell) out of bed to bail playful star Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow) out of jail. These early scenes would make any fan of these three want to stick around for more, but believe me, you'll regret that decision. Things go downhill rapidly when Mona meets avid fan and drunken playboy Bob Harrison Jr. (Franchot Tone), whose enthusiasm wanes and drunkenness worsens after the two are hastily married. Every indignity you can think of is flung at Harlow's character at a time in Harlow's life when she herself had recently been through a great personal tragedy, and you just get the feeling that MGM is using that tragedy to sell movie tickets. It really is a sad spectacle for any Harlow fan.The melodrama grows to ridiculous proportions by the end of the film, with Mona Leslie even being booed by fans and her giving a preposterous on stage speech as a result. All of this just crowds out any promise with which the film started. Avoid this one.

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.

A pretty forgettable movie starring William Powell and Jean Harlow. The plot really doesn't really come together and seems to be just thrown together. There are a few musicals numbers but they are pretty bad and don't compare to The Great Ziegfeld. Harlow looks like she's mouthing the words and her dance scene will only shows her legs and nothing else. The plot has something to do with Powell and Harlow being in love with each other but Franchot Tone comes in and steals Harlow away before Powell makes his move. Rosalind Russell is in love with Tone but she winds up getting married to someone else. The movie just doesn't work and this was directed by the same guy who directed The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.

Jean Harlow can be funny and likable in such delectable classics as "Dinner at Eight", "The Girl From Missouri", "Red-Headed Woman", "Platinum Blonde", among others. But she is wasted in "Reckless", a surprisingly plodding and undernourished comedy-musical-melodrama, made for MGM and David O. Selznick, directed by Victor Fleming. Harlow's Mona Leslie, a Broadway singer whose reckless affairs with rich playboy (Franchot Tone) leads to scandal and jealousy, is one of her weakest performances. William Powell plays her secret admirer who rescues her from carelessness. May Robson is the maid whose delightful banter with Powell is one of the few likable moments in the film. As in "Personal Property" and the overrated "Libeled Lady", the film offers nothing more than its earnestly plush and overproduced MGM look. And it is obvious from the beginning that Harlow is uncomfortable with this mush; her singing and musical numbers, mostly dubbed, are highly forgettable.