Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Probably the Screwball Comedy par excellence, even when there are some naysayers out there.

a) Is it cacophonous?

With a scene where two adults are trying to have conversation while simultaneously singing I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby, with a dog howling and a leopard loudly meowing at the same time, that’s difficult to dispute.

b) Is it an anti-intellectual film?

A museum worker acts more like a buffoon than a scientist; but this is hardly something like Altered States (1980) where the film makers actually were attempting to make the serious point that one can’t have love and a career in science at the same time.

Who says you can’t have both? Certainly not this film.

The paleontologist is hardly to be taken seriously as a scientist, much less anything the film has to say about science. This bookworm is suddenly attracted to excitement instead of to life with a dull co-worker? What’s so difficult to understand about that?

Besides, Romanticism already is a form of irrationalism. Most romantic films prize love above all else; and what’s the problem with that? Do people dislike the Marx Brothers because they were irrational?

c) Is it unfunny?

De gustibus non est disputandum.

What it is, is the story of a museum paleontologist on the day before his wedding who while seeking to obtain a much-needed grant meets with an unstoppable, tactless, clueless and brazen young society woman who seems intent on obstructing his every move starting by stealing a golf ball and then his car.

And it only gets worse for him from here on.

Fortunately for him she is acquainted with the sponsor so hope spring eternal, if they stick together, that he’ll eventually be able to patch things up with the sponsor.

Good luck with that!

While at first their meetings are accidental, there comes a point where she admits she has fallen in love with him and has decided to win him over; and from then on she begins to act willfully.

When this happens exactly is not very clear.

Add to that mix problems with torn, missing, and gender mismatched clothing; a fox-terrier who can’t tell the difference between a nice, fresh, juicy meat-bone and a petrified one, (just the weight should tell you something is off!); people who can’t tell the difference between a tame, music-loving leopard and a man-killing one, etc.

By the end he has dumped his stuffy bride-to-be and chooses this chaotic relationship instead; and, lest there be any doubt, the film ends by demolishing his five-year project which, in retrospect, is interesting since it’s long been known that the brontosaurus didn’t exist:

The creature with that name was a mix-n-match skeleton of bones from different species that was actually “discovered” twice. This is actually an opportunity for him to do it right the second time.

It features a great cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald and Fritz Feld.

A zany, fast-paced Classic which ‘inspired’ What’s Up Doc? (1972).