The Big Bluff: A Comedy of Errors That Mostly Just Bluffs

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you are deeply obsessed with early thirties comedies about class snobbery and bad acting. If you love the chaos of a 'let's pretend' plot, you might get a kick out of it. If you want something with actual stakes or a tight script, you’re going to hate this.

The whole thing feels like it was written on the back of a napkin during a lunch break. Our main character, a woman so bored she creates her own drama, decides to parade an actor around as royalty just to spite a neighbor. It’s the kind of premise that worked better in silent films like Luck in Pawn, but here it just feels... itchy.

The awkward bits

The pacing is a disaster. There’s a scene near the middle where the characters just stand around in a drawing room for what feels like an entire afternoon. Nobody is really saying anything interesting, and the camera just sits there, watching them wait for someone to make a joke.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Big Bluff (1933) through its definitive frames.

Reginald Denny is trying, God bless him, but he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. The way he adjusts his tie every time he’s nervous is a nice touch, though. I counted him doing it at least twelve times in one scene. It’s the little, meaningless details like that which keep me from falling asleep entirely.

• The dialogue is stilted, like they’re reading off a cue card held by a guy who hates them.
• The party scene looks like it had a budget of exactly four dollars.
• Claudia Dell is the only one who seems to know what movie she’s in.

Comparing this to something like Noisy Neighbors really highlights how much the tone misses the mark. It tries to be high-society clever but lands somewhere near a dull stage play that lost its funding halfway through. There's a moment where a butler drops a tray, and I’m pretty sure that was the highlight of the whole picture. 🙄

Sometimes, the film stops being a comedy and starts feeling like an endurance test. You can almost see the actors thinking about their next meal. It isn’t a total wash—there’s a weird, specific charm to the way these old films treat “royalty” as a personality trait—but it’s a stretch to call it a good time.

Skip it unless you’re a completionist. Or if you really, really need to see what people in 1933 thought was a 'scandalous' dinner party. It’s mostly just people being loud and wrong.