Screwball comedies are all about reversals: of power, gender politics, etc, etc. And I have to give credit to Victor Fleming's Bombshell for introducing a kind of reversal that I have never encountered before within the genre: a fancy career woman, in this case a famous actress, tries to settle down and become more "traditional" while the men around her try to convince her to be more independent. The only problem is that the men are in it for entirely selfish reasons—the family wants her to stay an actress so the gravy train will continue and her agent is madly in love with her. Of course, this being the 1930s, the agent manifests his desires by emotionally manipulating and lying to her. Bombshell is repugnant to the point of being genuinely creepy. You could honestly re-edit it to make it a thriller about a psychotic publicity manager ruining the life of an actress because she is not interested in him. He hires actors to seduce her, emotionally torment her, and leave her so he can swoop in at the end and "rescue" her. What's worse, this is supposed to come off as charming. It's not. But Bombshell's worse sin? It's not very funny.
3/10
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