Classic of the Week: What’s Up Doc? (1972)

What’s Up Doc? is a 1972 American romantic screwball comedy film directed by Petrer Bogdanovich and starring Barbara Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. It was intended to pay homage to the comedy films of the 30s and 40s, particularly Bringing Up Baby and Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny cartoons. The film was loosely based on A Glimpse of Tiger by Herman Raucher.

Dr. Howard Bannister, a musicologist from the Iowa Conservatory of Music, has made a trip to San Fransisco to compete for a research grant offered by Frederick Larrabee. Howard is accompanied by his oppressive fiancee Eunice Burns. As the two check into the Hotel Bristol, Howard runs into the charming troublemaker Judy Maxwell in the hotel’s drugstore. She never finished college, but has collected a considerable amount of knowledge from all the academic institutions from which she has been expelled. She begins to pursue Howard and checks into a room in the hotel without paying.

Coincidentally, four parties are staying on the same floor of the hotel, all carrying identical plaid overnight bags. Howard’s bag has igneous “tambula” rocks have certain musical properties. The mysterious “Mr. Smith” has a bag containing top-secret government papers, which he has gotten illegally. Wealthy socialite Mrs. Van Hoskinshas a bag containing her sizable collection of valuable jewels. Judy’s bag is filled with her clothing and a large dictionary.

Over the course of the evening, the bags are switched randomly from room to room as the four parties unwittingly take one other’s bags. Howard ends up withe jewels, judy with the documents, Mr. Smith with Judy’s clothes, and thieves with the rocks.

Judy pretending to be Eunice at the musicologists’ banquet, uses her humor and academic knowledge to charm everyone except Howard’s competitor Hugh Simon. Unable to get over Judy’s masquerade – realizing Larrabee’s infatuation with her might win him the grant – Howard denies knowing the real Eunice when she hysterically tries to enter the banquet. Judy later sneaks into Howard’s hotel room. His attemps to try and hide Judy from Eunice lead to a fire and the destroying of the room.

The next day, everyone makes their way to a reception in the Larrabee’s fancy Victoriian house, where a fight breaks out, involving guns, furniture, and pies. Howard and Judy take all four bags and escape the fight, first on a delivery bike, and a Volkswagen Beetle, stolen from a wedding, chased by Mr, Smith and Mr. Jones, the jewel thieves.

Everyone ends up in court, where Judge Maxwell, already close to a nervous breakdown, tires to clear up the matter, but only advances in finding his daughter Judy the cause of all the trouble.

This film is a lot like classic screwball comedies. It is both hilarious and romantic, but also nothing but one shenanigan after another. There is no drama and Streisand’s character Judy is very annoying for a vast majority of the film. She won’t leave Howard alone to save her life, and yes, O’Neal’s Howard was a handsome fella, but he was not interested in her (at first) and was very annoyed by her. Although Howard is engaged to Madeline Kahn’s Eunice, he doesn’t seem to love her much as he treats her at times, like an annoyance and often ignores her and doesn’t seem like he really wants to marry her . Eunice’s wig is a redhead, flipped out bob with bangs and you can tell it’s a wig. Eunice is a worrywart and wants to control Howard. Howard and Eunice do not go together, but that is probably the point.

Kenneth Mars’s Hugh Simon, Howard’s rival, is super competitive, self-centered, and pretentious. Austin Pendelton’s Frederick Larrabee is extremely nerdy and wealthy, but weak as far as defending himself or others go.

This is a very silly movie, with no seriousness at all. There is some romance, but it is briefly shown. The main characters spend almost the entire runtime getting in trouble, which is entertaining, but it cuts the storyline short. Had there been less action and more dramedy type scenes, the story would have been better and the film would have been more enjoyable. The film jumps right into the screwball comedy too fast and you really don’t learn much about the characters. The acting is great from the majority of the cast, but that still doesn’t make this a great movie. Yes, it is funny, and fairly romantic, but that is all.

The characters disaters are funny, but that is all this story is, nothing more. There is no real depth, not much heart is more like Chaplin or Keaton film mixed with the Three Stooges, mixed with a rom-com, which doesn’t make for a great movie, although it is quite entertaining, it lacks a lot in the plot. There is very little you get to know about the characters, making them all rather dull and not interesting at all, even stylish Judy. This is a very one dimensional film with far too much humor and very little heart. 10+ 3.5/5

Classic of the Week: Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The film tells the story of a paleontologist in numerous quandries involving an absentminded heiress and a leopard named Baby. 

David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a benevolent paleontologist. For the past few years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus but is missing a bone. Adding to his stress, is his approaching marriage to the morose Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) and the need to impress Elizabeth Random (Mary Robson), who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum. 

The day before his wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn) by chance on a golf course when she hits his ball. She is a scatterbrained, eccentric young lady. These qualities soon entangle Davis in sever agonizing incidents. 

Susan’s brother Mark has sent her a leopard named Baby from Brazil. Its tameness is helped by the song “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” Susan thinks Davis is a zoologists and manipulates David into helping her take baby to her farm in Connecticut. Troubles arise when Susan falls in love with him and tries to keep him at her house as long as possible. 

David’s bone arrives, but Susan’s aunt’s dog George takes it and buries it somewhere. Davis founds out that the aunt is donor Elizabeth Random and that the leopard is for her, as she always wanted one. Baby and George run off and the zoo is called to help capture Baby. Susan and David run to find Baby before the zoo, mistaking a dangerous leopard from a nearby circus for Baby, they let it out of the cage. After being jailed let go after comfirming their idenities, they get Baby back to the safety of the farm. 

This a funny, cute movie that both animal and romance lovers would enjoy. It’s plot is simple enough that both older children and adults can enjoy it too. It’s equal parts, funny and romantic and has a little bit of intensity. There is some adult humor that will go over kids’ heads, but it is very mild and not to be really concerned about, unlike the fairly intense scenes involving Baby, especially the scene where Baby and George fight violently. Just because there is no blood seen, it still may frighten young children. 

This film was a commercial flop upon relaease and only made a small profit after its re-release in the 1940s. It fact, it was panned by both audiences and critics. Today it is celebrated as one of the greatest not just comedy film, but greatest films of all time. It has quite a bit of adult humor. Like a scene where Susan takes all of David’s clothes and he has nothing to wear but her negligee and her aunt walks in and sees him and asks why he is wearing it and he replies: “I just went gay all of the sudden!” Not only does this play on the two meanings of the word gay, it was the first time that gay was ever used to refer to homosexuality, even if it was being masked by the other meaning of the word. 

There are many other scenes where the literal and figurative meaning of words are used, like in the dinner with David, Mr. Applegate, Susan and Mrs. Random, Mr. Applegate is trying to get David to open up about himself, but he won’t and Mr. Applegate says: “Well at least I got a rise out of him.” Mr. Applegate was trying to get a rise out of david using the figuative meaning, but David rose out of his seat and left, using the literal meaning. This kind of play on words in the dialogue is so fast, you may miss it if you don’t pay attention, but enjoy it so much if you do. 

While this kind of writing has been around for centuries, this tounge-in-cheek kind of dialouge had limitations put on screenwriters when it came out in 1930 with the Motion Picture Production Code, which limited references to anything sexual, either audilbly, or visually in script. All of the talented writers in Hollywood had to create their dialogue to exclude sexual innuendos. Consequently, the screwball comedy was born, also known as “sex comedy without sex,” full of innuendos to cheat the code limitations and make the audience happy. Much of the punny script in this film will only appeal to adults, as young kids will not understand it. 

The acting is superb in this movie from all of the main cast, including Nissa who played Baby the leopard. It makes no sense why this film was originally panned, as it great and very entertaining from begining to end. Maybe audiences and critics were hoping for something more action packed and/or romantic. Well, to me it is the right amount of both. 

Animal lovers will likely love this movie, if they just put aside the animal abuse that ocurred. Whips and chains were used as the American Humane Association wasn’t enforced to monitor the use of animals in movies until several years later. Katherine Hepburn was pretty much fearless around the leopard, except for one time when the animal made a lunge for her and the trainer had to use a whip to calm it down. Cary Grant was less warm to the big cat and a double was used where his character and the leopard had to come in contact. 

This is not your typical rom-com, it’s not mushy gushy and laugh out loud funny throughout, which make it much more entertaining if you ask me. Had this movie been just stomach hurting funny and schmaltzy, it would have been very unenjoyable and I very likely would have turned it off or walked out of the theater had I been alive (and old enough) in 1938. 

Despite the few negatives associated with this film, it is still proably the greatest not just screwball comedies, not just comedies, but greatest movies of all time. This story feels like the screenwriter wasn’t happy with the original plot and threw it in a blender, turned it on, and decided to go with the end result, which is this chaotic masterpiece, that shouldn’t dare be remade. Sorry Peter Bagdanovich, but What’s Up Doc? is no Bringing Up Baby. 10+ 4.5/5