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Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The ultimate screwball comedy...
Review: If you are wondering what exactly "screwball comedy" is all about, just see this movie. It highlights the best of the genre: rapid, hilarious dialogue, frantic action, and a crazy plot. Furthermore, it has the perfect example of the essential part of "screwball" - a man and a woman who really love each other, but don't know it, and fight constantly. And, even if you know exactly what screwball comedy is all about, watch this anyhow! Quite simply, this movie is totally hilarious! Every scene is great, even though you could argue that some are a little too long (but I don't mind).

The plot is really bizarre, but basically it concerns a palentologist (played by Cary Grant) who lives a dull, boring life and is about to be married to an equally dull and businesslike woman (when he asks to go on a honeymoon, she objects b/c she claims he needs to work instead - "this will be our baby," she states, gesturing at the dinosour bones). By chance, however, he meets a madcap heiress (played by Katherine Hepburn) who turns his life upside down while taking him to Conneticut to deliver a leopard to her aunt.

The performances are all excellent, and Cary and Kate are wonderful together! This is screwball at its best (it is directed by Howard Hawks, the man responsible for some of the other great screwball comedies, like His Girl Friday and Twentieth Century) - and is a must-see for the whole family. Get this movie, and enjoy!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not like I remembered
Review: Now, I know that this is the quintessential screwball comedy, but when I watched it recently, it fell short of others I have seen. First, it's too long. They should have cut the scenes at the house by about fifteen minutes. The joke about the search for the bone is interminable. I got the point.
However, Grant and Hepburn are marvelous together (I kept thinking a remake would be well-served by using Lara Flynn Boyle) and Howard Hawks once again directs with skill and finesse. Every film fan should see this just because.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the greatest screwball comedies of all time
Review: BRINGING UP BABY hits the ground running and then never lets up. Director Howard Hawks is generally credited with inventing the screwball comedy with TWENTIETH CENTURY. He then went on later to direct two of the greatest screwball comedies every made, HIS GIRL FRIDAY and this film. All these films are remarkable for their frenetic pace, rapid fire, overlapping dialog, and air of surreality. People in these films don't reason like people in the world we know. Labeling it Screwball was merely an accident of history. It could just as easily, and perhaps more accurately, have been described as Cinema of the Absurd.

Cary Grant, bearing a strong resemblance to Harold Lloyd, plays David Huxley a.k.a. (by the end of the picture) David Bone a.k.a. Jerry the Nipster. One of the delights of the film is witnessing the way in which this bland, unexciting scientist is gradually pulled deeper and deeper into the life of nutty heiress Katherine Hepburn (Susan). Grant does a great job of portraying someone who is utterly befuddled and way, way over his head. And the helpless way he constantly holds up his finger and opens his mouth, foolishly hoping to get a word or two into the conversation, is wonderful. All things considered, Cary Grant was probably the greatest screwball comedy actor we have ever had. Katherine Hepburn, while arguably our greatest screen actress, is not the greatest screwball actress. That distinction clearly belongs to the incomparable Carole Lombard. But she is probably our second greatest. Absolutely nothing in her prior screen career could have led anyone to suspect that she was capable of a performance like she managed in BRINGING UP BABY. She had made her reputation as a dramatic actress, and as an actress who didn't always guarantee success in a film. In fact, BRINGING UP BABY was one of several box office disasters in which Hepburn appeared, and actually temporarily ended her career. Part of the fault lay with William Randolph Hearst, who hated Hepburn. The Hearst papers consistently criticized her, and labeled her "Box Office Poison." At any rate, the performance is one of Hepburn's greatest, and is probably her greatest comic performance. She was never nuttier or more anarchic than she was in this film. The supporting cast is just stunning, with such stalwarts as Charlie Ruggles and Barry Fitzgerald doing their usual great turn. The most surprising performance (apart from what was, at the time, the amazing revelation that Hepburn excelled in comedy) was by Walter Catlett, who was remarkable as Slocum, the town constable. His "investigation" of the "Leopard Gang" is one of the highlights of the film. His performance meshes precisely with that of Grant and Hepburn.

The one thing that has always baffled me about this film is that "Baby," the leopard, is said to have been shipped to Susan from her brother who is in Brazil. The only spotted cat in South America is the jaguar, which is much stockier than a leopard, and as far as I know, not capable of being tamed. Leopards come from Africa. I am not sure why they had Baby coming from Brazil. I believe that there had been no interruption of international shipping in 1938. In THE LADY EVE in 1940, the ocean liner upon which Barbara Stanwyck meets Henry Fonda is sailing from South America. But in 1938, it should have been possible to have a ship come from Africa. Probably, this was just a goof in the script.

BRINGING UP BABY may have been the earliest film to use the word "gay" to refer to being effeminate or gay.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Bringing Up Baby is a Hilarious Classic
Review: Bringing Up Baby is a hilarious classic. It is fun for the entire family. Grant and Hepburn were made to be in movies together. Their chemistry is alluring and fun. I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I do. Just to prove my point, I am only 24 years old. This movie was made before I was born, and I still love it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Would you believe a Howard Hawk's film?
Review: Bringing up baby is as described frantic, fast and noisy. You do not have time to get your breath. All the actors are at their best. There is a story line and a consistency that keeps this movie from being a bunch of one liners. One of the themes is mistaking baby for another. Many movies did this with black bags. However bags don't bite. And again every time Carry Grant gets mixed up with Katharine somthing inevitably goes wrong and this snowballs as the movie progresses. The movie moves fast enough that you may want to watch it again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: I saw this movie for the first time a few months ago on AMC and was laughing out loud the entire time! It's so cleverly done, and Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant are so good at the slapstick! Charming! Well worth watching many times!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Screwball Comedy
Review: Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn both made their share of comedies, but this one was different for both of them. It might be the fastest, most frenetic movie I've seen. Most of the comedy is pure slapstick, which was not typical for Grant or Hepburn. Grant plays a bookish archaeologist being courted by eccentric heiress Hepburn, who lives in the country and just happens to have a pet leopard ("Baby"). It's a miracle either survives the pratfalls (although Grant has always been fairly athletic and often inserts scenes involving climbing ledges and jumping from window sill to window sill in his films). In this movie, he reminds me of Jacques Tati in "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" as he bumbles from disaster to disaster. This film also highlights Ms. Hepburn's versatility, as everyone knows she can do romance and drama ("The African Queen" and "The Lion in Winter"). The romantic/comic banter in this movie is as fast-paced as the movie as a whole, and you have to listen closely to catch it all. You have to be wide awake and in the mood to pay attention to watch this movie and enjoy it. If you are those things, watch it and have a ball.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Screwball at its most brilliant and frenetic
Review: I saw Bringing Up Baby for the first time just under a month ago, and have since rewatched it about five times. Not only does it stand up to repeated viewings, it seems almost to *require* them; there's no way to absorb everything at one go. The best part is that the funny bits are just as funny on the sixth viewing as they were on the first, if not even funnier, because you've grown to really love the scatter-brained chatterbox Susan, and the befuddled, confused David.

It's impossible to imagine anyone else playing either Susan or David: Hepburn and Grant are perfect for their roles, and their characters are perfect (foils) for each other. Most people would consider Hepburn a dramatic actress, largely because of her later body of work (e.g. The Lion In Winter). But BUB proves she is a dazzling, charming comedienne, well able to go toe-to-toe with the funniest men in the business. Grant is wonderfully generous in allowing her to dominate the movie by playing the straight man, and he does so wonderfully as well.

Watch this for Hepburn, watch this for Grant, watch this for Hepburn *and* Grant... and, oh yes, watch it for the leopard. ;)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It just doesn't get any funnier than this...
Review: Maybe the best of the screwball comedies. No one is more charming than Cary Grant, and he does a wonderful downplaying his prissy archaeologist, but that charm is still there. And Katharine Hepburn is hilarious as an eccentric whose dog runs off with his bone. 'Classic' with a capitol 'CLASSIC!!!'

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Funniest Movies of All Time!
Review: Who wouldn't love Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in one of the best and funniest movies of all time?


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