Bedroom farces used to be funny because they were the exception to the rule and because they usually had some amusing dialogue, or plot, or direction, or acting. But the inevitable Hollywood stagnation has crept into even this field; and the result is that "Come Live With Me" at Loew's is slow, unfunny, badly acted, and anything but sophisticated, as it tries so hard to be.

It deals, of course, with a husband's attempts to bring his marriage to its logical conclusion, and culminates in his final success after long and arduous tribulations. In "This Thing Called Love" the same theme was handled with wit and if not subtlety, at least a certain adult touch. But in this picture the heavy, sloppy traces of poor direction and casting and even photography can be felt time and again. In addition to this the dialogue is as poor as anything that has come out of Hollywood for quite a while. There are about two actually funny remarks in the movie.

James Stewart plays his usual role of a nice, intelligent, slightly bewildered, but withal noble-charactered country lad at large in the big city, with a reasonable persuasiveness. But he has had this same part for so long that it is getting to be a little on the tiring side. Hedy Lamarr lets the cameraman accentuate the contrast between the whiteness of her skin and darkness of her eyes and hair, and tries to hide the fact that her figure is not what the simmer in her eyes would lead us to believe. But she does no acting, says nothing funny, and in general handles a highly insipid part in a highly insipid fashion. The one bright spot in the picture is Donald Meek, who appears for a few brief moments as a philosophical hobo. But his part is too brief to have any effect on the picture as a whole, and once he goes away the audience is doomed to an hour of very dull and very unsuccessful Holloywood sophistication.