The romance of a pair of nearly-married prankster-loving reporters is disrupted, when one of them is promoted to editor and suffers a drastic personality change. Unfortunately, despite a winning cast, this earnest attempt at screwball comedy fails to gel. Rusty Fleming and Charlie Mason clown around and play jokes, but the results are often silly and unfunny. Singing childish songs with a band on the back of a truck, making wisecracks while someone is supposedly drowning, knocking out the pilot to fly a plane into a storm; all are desperate failed attempts to be amusing.
Based on a screenplay by Joseph Antony from a story by Paul Gallico. "Wedding Present" squanders a stellar cast of comic performers, who give their best with a incredulous lame script. Cary Grant is Charlie, the crazy newsman, who goofs off at city hall and misses the closing hour to get a marriage license; meanwhile, Joan Bennett as Rusty, Charlie's news partner and romantic partner, shows the strains of life with a wild and crazy guy. However, Rusty is tolerant until Charlie's promotion, when he abruptly becomes a tough, serious-minded taskmaster in the newsroom. Nothing is predictable as wanted gangsters, a self-help author, a sinking ship, a posse of incompetent office painters, a missing archduke, and a bunch of silly songs complicate matters. Sounds funny? Not really, the script is too disconnected and ridiculous to evoke more than an occasional smile
Grant outrageously mugs his way through much of the film; while he is in his "Cary Grant" handsome comic mode, this is no "Bringing Up Baby," and the material does not warrant his efforts. Lovely Joan Bennett under-plays her role, and she registers better with a sly and subtle delivery. Like the stars, the supporting cast of comic players deserves better material. George Bancroft as a news editor, Gene Lockhart as the archduke, William Demarest as a gangster named "Smiles," and Edward Brophy as Demarest's sidekick "Squinty," have their moments, but they have had better ones in better films. Although director Richard Wallace cut his teeth on silent comedy, he generally helmed "B" pictures, and his work on "Wedding Present" is middling at best. While the film is worth catching for the cast, all have done better work elsewhere, and, if viewers want to see a classic screwball comedy about reporters, "His Girl Friday" fills the bill.
