Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Criterion Channel at home on Monday, December 26.

Christ almighty, I have never seen so many funny moments in such a confused, sloppy mess as Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. Imagine all of the great screwball comedies–seriously, pick any one, from Bringing Up Baby to His Girl Friday to Ninotchka–and then boil down their plot, character and any themes, remove any emotion, cut out most transitionary moments, leaving behind a thick sauce of jokes, and that’s Bluebeard. It’s the story of a guy, Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper), who is rich and has been married seven times, who runs into Nicole de Loiselle (Claudette Colbert), a woman who doesn’t have much money and is the daughter of a friendly, scheming father. Their meeting is charming: we wants to buy only the tops of a pair of pajamas, the store won’t let him, so Nicole steps in and says she only wants the lower half. It’s a long scene, timed perfectly, funny, a bit touching, establishing Michael and Niocole as two potential lovers we want to spend time with.

That’s the only time we’re going to linger over any moment in this movie. In rapid-fire fashion, Michael woos her, she hates him, then falls for him, discovers he had seven wives prior, she is upset but turns the tables on Brandon by agreeing to marry him if he guarantees her $100,000 a year salary if they divorce. So they marry and a battle of wills ensures.

Sounds great, yeah? It’s hilarious, but the jokes are empty because screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, along with Lubitsch, develop nothing. Seriously, after that initial pajama-buying scene, the story just absolutely races from one set piece to the next: one minute Brandon and Nicole hate one another, the next minute she declares her undying love for him. It’s so abrupt we both wondered whether or not this was an edited version. It’s not. Naturally, there’s a big gag at the climax of the movie that is just so well crafted but utterly toothless because we’ve been whipping between love and hate without much development of the relationship. There’s supporting characters played by Elizabeth Patterson, Edward Everett Horton and David Niven that are also funny but appear and disappear so swiftly we barely get to know them. It’s as if Lubitsch thought that there was no way this movie would be good at 100 minutes, so he sliced anything that wasn’t bonkers comedy from the film.

It’s like the potato chip party I had years ago: 20 bags of chips from around the world, and after a very short while you were gasping for water and anything that wasn’t coated with salt. Empty calories, this, but a pleasant diversion if you need to kill 80+ minutes.

Gary Cooper missed the boat on screwball comedy, though. The dude was funny. Too bad he took the “high” road and stuck with westerns and dramas. His loss.