An excellent and wacky rom com inspired by the movies of Laurel and Hardy, during which we follow the adventures of Susan and David from a golf driving range until the destruction of a dinosaur skeleton, not to mention the songs needed to calm down a leopard. Certainly, the scenario is far-fetched but that's exactly the global idea! Indeed, we regularly flirt with the absurd through dialogues of the deaf, misunderstandings and tutti quanti. The manifold gags reinforce the endearing side of Susan and David. Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant excel in these atypical roles, and Walter Catlett is so hilarious. This black and white film of another era, between the Great Depression of 1929 and the Second World War, is a delight to be enjoyed with your sweetheart or with family.
338 Reviews
Wild, crazy, hysterical, FUN!
Tommy-9218 September 1999
Those people who don't like this movie seem to miss the point; IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE RIDICULOUS AND MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL! THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT FUNNY! Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I want to say that I really did have a laugh a minute. Both Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn are very adapt at this kind of comedy, in top form here, and work very well together. They have a great, very funny supporting cast, as well; though most are long dead and forgotten, many were well-known character actors in the 30's. They knew their craft, and are great at it here. Howard Hawks must have been some director to be able to fashion such a great movie out of a madcap pace and a script in which everyone talks at the same time and is always ad-libbing. (I've heard those were his trademarks, though.) One scene after another at breakneck pace, but never a dull moment. As soon as one laugh stops, another one begins. In case you haven't gotten the point, I highly suggest you see this movie. It may be 60 years old, but it's still hilarious.
Goofy, Glamorous Golden-Age Gonfalon
slokes21 August 2005
"Bringing Up Baby" is the standard for timeless screwball comedy, clever, charming, with tons of heart. It's also probably the most satisfying comedy in both Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant's careers, together and apart, which is really saying something.
Grant plays David Huxley, a nebbishy dinosaur expert who plans to get a million dollars for his museum and marry his icy fiancée Alice. Hepburn plays ditzy but determined Susan Vance, who sets her sights on upsetting Huxley's plans so she can have him to herself.
What could be a protracted exercise in frustration comedy, or else a humorless excursion into the stalking habits of the rich and nutty, is made joyous instead by the way Hepburn pulls us into her zany character and makes us root for her to reel Huxley in. After telling David, who wants nothing to do with her, that she has a leopard in her apartment, Susan trips in mid-call and then gets the bright idea of pretending she's being mauled by the beast.
"Oh, David, the leopard!" she screams, rubbing the phone's mouthpiece against a fireplace grate for added terror.
David takes the bait. "Be brave, Susan. I'll be there!" he shouts as he trips for the door. Kate's merry smirk is the perfect scene-capper.
Susan is brave, in her convention- and logic-defying way, and one can trace the line from Jo March to Grace Quigley right through her in the panoply of strong, feminist-icon Kate Hepburn roles. But while Hepburn was amusing in other parts, she was never as much so as she was here, taking pratfalls and throwing off non-sequiturs like a Vaudeville clown. Warm, too: I think one of the film's secret strengths is the notion a nebbishy guy could end up with a beautiful, self-assured woman despite his best and worst efforts. The hell with macho: This is one romantic comedy where the guy winds up fainting in the gal's arms.
Of course it helps if the nebbish looks like Cary Grant in glasses. Grant did play fusty characters in other films, but there's something about him with the pretty but frigid Alice (Virginia Walker, director Howard Hawks' sister-in-law but a good performance anyway from someone not much seen again), who tells him there will be no honeymoon or "domestic entanglements of any kind." "This," she says, gesturing at the brontosaurus skeleton he has been painfully assembling over the past few years, "will be our child." "Oh, it's nice," David replies, sadly and submissively. He is in definite need of screwball intervention.
The film is one of those classics that could only be made in the 1930s, when everything could be played in a light and airy fashion without any pretense of reality. 1972's "What's Up, Doc" is a classy replay of "Baby" in spirit if not script, but while I enjoy that film nearly as much, it's not hard to see the problem director Peter Bogdanovich had on his hands trying to make us accept such nutty behavior in living color.
Bogdanovich's commentary on the "Baby" DVD is insightful and worthwhile, and I agree with him that the subplot involving Barry Fitzgerald's drunken gardener is the weak link in this otherwise fine film. I also worry about poor George playing with Baby; does anyone else notice that nasty gash on the poor dog's side? I wonder how many "Georges" Hawks went through before he got the scene as filmed.
The other secondary characters are terrific all the way through, especially May Robson as Aunt Elizabeth (the one apparently sane character until she complains about waiting for her new pet) and Walter Catlett as the constable, which I have a soft spot for beyond his beetle brows and his way of slapping his hands together like a mad auctioneer. Anyone else notice he shares a last name with Harvey Keitel's lawman in "Thelma & Louise"? Given Kate's lawbreaking performance here, I wonder if that was intentional...
Grant plays David Huxley, a nebbishy dinosaur expert who plans to get a million dollars for his museum and marry his icy fiancée Alice. Hepburn plays ditzy but determined Susan Vance, who sets her sights on upsetting Huxley's plans so she can have him to herself.
What could be a protracted exercise in frustration comedy, or else a humorless excursion into the stalking habits of the rich and nutty, is made joyous instead by the way Hepburn pulls us into her zany character and makes us root for her to reel Huxley in. After telling David, who wants nothing to do with her, that she has a leopard in her apartment, Susan trips in mid-call and then gets the bright idea of pretending she's being mauled by the beast.
"Oh, David, the leopard!" she screams, rubbing the phone's mouthpiece against a fireplace grate for added terror.
David takes the bait. "Be brave, Susan. I'll be there!" he shouts as he trips for the door. Kate's merry smirk is the perfect scene-capper.
Susan is brave, in her convention- and logic-defying way, and one can trace the line from Jo March to Grace Quigley right through her in the panoply of strong, feminist-icon Kate Hepburn roles. But while Hepburn was amusing in other parts, she was never as much so as she was here, taking pratfalls and throwing off non-sequiturs like a Vaudeville clown. Warm, too: I think one of the film's secret strengths is the notion a nebbishy guy could end up with a beautiful, self-assured woman despite his best and worst efforts. The hell with macho: This is one romantic comedy where the guy winds up fainting in the gal's arms.
Of course it helps if the nebbish looks like Cary Grant in glasses. Grant did play fusty characters in other films, but there's something about him with the pretty but frigid Alice (Virginia Walker, director Howard Hawks' sister-in-law but a good performance anyway from someone not much seen again), who tells him there will be no honeymoon or "domestic entanglements of any kind." "This," she says, gesturing at the brontosaurus skeleton he has been painfully assembling over the past few years, "will be our child." "Oh, it's nice," David replies, sadly and submissively. He is in definite need of screwball intervention.
The film is one of those classics that could only be made in the 1930s, when everything could be played in a light and airy fashion without any pretense of reality. 1972's "What's Up, Doc" is a classy replay of "Baby" in spirit if not script, but while I enjoy that film nearly as much, it's not hard to see the problem director Peter Bogdanovich had on his hands trying to make us accept such nutty behavior in living color.
Bogdanovich's commentary on the "Baby" DVD is insightful and worthwhile, and I agree with him that the subplot involving Barry Fitzgerald's drunken gardener is the weak link in this otherwise fine film. I also worry about poor George playing with Baby; does anyone else notice that nasty gash on the poor dog's side? I wonder how many "Georges" Hawks went through before he got the scene as filmed.
The other secondary characters are terrific all the way through, especially May Robson as Aunt Elizabeth (the one apparently sane character until she complains about waiting for her new pet) and Walter Catlett as the constable, which I have a soft spot for beyond his beetle brows and his way of slapping his hands together like a mad auctioneer. Anyone else notice he shares a last name with Harvey Keitel's lawman in "Thelma & Louise"? Given Kate's lawbreaking performance here, I wonder if that was intentional...
Magnificent, joyous japery.
HenryHextonEsq31 January 2003
"Bringing Up Baby" is a film I unconditionally love; it is so utterly sublime a comedy that I was truly sighing, awed, 'it can't get better than this...' at many points. Yet it regularly does; Hawks keeps the momentum going majestically; it is one incredibly surreal, bizarre tangent going off unexpectedly into another, at every juncture. He photographs and presents his actors in the most charming and amusing possible ways, and the film is certainly a more leisurely, perfectly pitched film than "His Girl Friday", which I nonetheless admire. There is a beauty in the photography and simple choice of perspectives and angles that matches the
There is not one actress in the annals of film who I adore more than Katharine Hepburn; she is a compelling performer, of great charm, intelligence and wit; of very real, idiosyncratic looks that to this eye are beautiful, vivacious, impish. In "Bringing Up Baby" her Susan Vance is a very interesting diversion from her more usual type of character - the slightly superior, in-control ice maiden, as shown in say "The Philadelphia Story". She is phenomenal in that film, yet here beguiling in a completely different fashion, playing a slightly scatterbrained, sprightly, charmingly delinquent woman, who seems to have no control over anything; least of all her feelings for Grant. Her giddy, breathless exuberance and anarchic helplessness are really endearing; it's a wonderful film that stretches out the credulity of Grant's wonderfully straight-laced character's resistance to Miss Vance. The ending is a gorgeous, satisfying pay-off, as he finally gives way, as would we all! It's a charming, suitable ending that rectifies the slight fall-off of the preceding jail section of the film. That is very amusing, but in a more predictable, slightly laboured way. In stark contrast to the first 70-80 minutes of the film, which amounts to about the finest sustained American comedy I have seen of that length - "Way Out West" and "Duck Soup" being shorter in total.
Cary Grant, truly an institution of a comedic player, is very different to his more remembered persona of later years. It's remarkable to see this absurd little man, bespectacled, unworldly and cutting an orthodox figure played so perfectly by the suave Grant. This is gleefully played on with the sublime scene where Hepburn and Grant are trying to catch the leopard - Kate butterfly net in hand! She accidentally happens to break his glasses and is even more taken with him without them... The tension between how we usually remember Grant and the character he is playing here does add an extra layer of amusement to the film. Need I really add that the rest of the film's company are note perfect? Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald and many more really give the perfectly matched stars a fine backdrop.
I shan't spoil too much of this heady, sublimely silly film... just go and watch it and see Howard Hawks, a master craftsman, at his best - there are no pretensions but making a quite wonderful character comedy - and Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant on insurmountable form. With these delightful stars and anarchic, scintillating comic material, what we have on our hands is an unutterably fine film, one of my very favourites of all time. Where else are you going to get such plot threads running simultaneously as: a hunt for a rare archeological find buried by a dog, an absurd upper-middle-class family dinner and an escaped leopard?
Rating:- *****/*****
There is not one actress in the annals of film who I adore more than Katharine Hepburn; she is a compelling performer, of great charm, intelligence and wit; of very real, idiosyncratic looks that to this eye are beautiful, vivacious, impish. In "Bringing Up Baby" her Susan Vance is a very interesting diversion from her more usual type of character - the slightly superior, in-control ice maiden, as shown in say "The Philadelphia Story". She is phenomenal in that film, yet here beguiling in a completely different fashion, playing a slightly scatterbrained, sprightly, charmingly delinquent woman, who seems to have no control over anything; least of all her feelings for Grant. Her giddy, breathless exuberance and anarchic helplessness are really endearing; it's a wonderful film that stretches out the credulity of Grant's wonderfully straight-laced character's resistance to Miss Vance. The ending is a gorgeous, satisfying pay-off, as he finally gives way, as would we all! It's a charming, suitable ending that rectifies the slight fall-off of the preceding jail section of the film. That is very amusing, but in a more predictable, slightly laboured way. In stark contrast to the first 70-80 minutes of the film, which amounts to about the finest sustained American comedy I have seen of that length - "Way Out West" and "Duck Soup" being shorter in total.
Cary Grant, truly an institution of a comedic player, is very different to his more remembered persona of later years. It's remarkable to see this absurd little man, bespectacled, unworldly and cutting an orthodox figure played so perfectly by the suave Grant. This is gleefully played on with the sublime scene where Hepburn and Grant are trying to catch the leopard - Kate butterfly net in hand! She accidentally happens to break his glasses and is even more taken with him without them... The tension between how we usually remember Grant and the character he is playing here does add an extra layer of amusement to the film. Need I really add that the rest of the film's company are note perfect? Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald and many more really give the perfectly matched stars a fine backdrop.
I shan't spoil too much of this heady, sublimely silly film... just go and watch it and see Howard Hawks, a master craftsman, at his best - there are no pretensions but making a quite wonderful character comedy - and Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant on insurmountable form. With these delightful stars and anarchic, scintillating comic material, what we have on our hands is an unutterably fine film, one of my very favourites of all time. Where else are you going to get such plot threads running simultaneously as: a hunt for a rare archeological find buried by a dog, an absurd upper-middle-class family dinner and an escaped leopard?
Rating:- *****/*****
What's with the recent bashing of this film?
senocardeira13 October 2004
It's not just a classic - It's a timeless one! Katharine Hepburn (by her own accounts) was in two minds about playing screwball comedy. But she pulls off the characterization of the mad-cappest heroin/heiress ever portrayed on film. It's NOT Kate. It's Kate brilliantly breaking out of her 1930s typecast. The pace is fast, Cary Grant is brilliant as the professor Kate harasses/helps/falls in love with throughout. And what about Susan's aunt and the major? Priceless! Kudos to Baby, as well. I think maybe a few reviewers have been taking their humor from watching 1930s European comedies. Unless it's all out and out vaudeville or cabaret transpositions you're watching, I wouldn't recommend making those your standards for judging "Bringing Up Baby". Worse still if you're judging by American/European standards of the 21st Century. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying since you can't compare this to virtually anything of those, just enjoy the ride. The Acting you CAN compare, though. And I put my money & soul on Hepburn, Grant & Baby every time.
10/10
10/10
Utter perfection. Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant make the most exquisite comedy of the sound era
bmacv2 January 2004
In his glorious Bringing Up Baby, Howard Hawks ratchets screwball comedy up to its tautest and springiest level. In clumsier hands, screwball all too often gallops into the frenetic, fraying the nerves; Hawks maintains a presto pace, but never lets the mixups and misunderstandings grow implausible he just glides serenely to something else. (And he makes it look easy, which it isn't: Peter Bogdanovich fumbled in his loose remake What's Up, Doc, making it labored and literal-minded.)
Hawks could barely go wrong with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as his leads, but the rest of the cast he assembles, human as well as animal, can't be faulted either (with the redoubtable May Robson earning extra credit). And while he draws on stock characters and stereotypes that probably date back to commedia dell'arte the stuffy professor, the blithe rich girl, her crusty dowager aunt, the bumbling sheriff he freshens each one up, making them distinctive, memorable and endearing.
Behind a pair of repressive spectacles, Grant plays the single-minded paleontologist whose path crosses with that of madcap Hepburn, never again to uncross. The plot revolves around a leopard named Baby, a million dollars, an intercostal clavicle bone, a dog named George who buries it....well, it all makes perfect sense while you're watching.
Underneath all the antics, Hawks never loses sight of the pastoral romance that Bringing Up Baby at its core really is (at its most magical in the woods under a full moon, and captured by Russell Metty's lovely photography). Grant's been rooting around in the dirt for so long looking for dinosaur bones that it takes him forever to 'get' Hepburn an airborne sprite who never comes down to earth. (Their alchemy here is rarefied, not the commoner sort of reaction they kindled in the stage-bound The Philadelphia Story.)
Last but not least, the movie features the canine talents of Asta (né Skippy), who appeared as himself in the Thin Man series Nick and Nora Charles' lovable cur. Here he plays George, who, barking his stubby tail off, has no qualms about tangling with Baby the leopard. Is there any question that this high-strung wire-haired terrier is and will forever be (pace Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie) Hollywood's top dog? How fitting that he should lend his considerable talents to Bringing Up Baby, the most exquisite comedy of the sound era.
Hawks could barely go wrong with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as his leads, but the rest of the cast he assembles, human as well as animal, can't be faulted either (with the redoubtable May Robson earning extra credit). And while he draws on stock characters and stereotypes that probably date back to commedia dell'arte the stuffy professor, the blithe rich girl, her crusty dowager aunt, the bumbling sheriff he freshens each one up, making them distinctive, memorable and endearing.
Behind a pair of repressive spectacles, Grant plays the single-minded paleontologist whose path crosses with that of madcap Hepburn, never again to uncross. The plot revolves around a leopard named Baby, a million dollars, an intercostal clavicle bone, a dog named George who buries it....well, it all makes perfect sense while you're watching.
Underneath all the antics, Hawks never loses sight of the pastoral romance that Bringing Up Baby at its core really is (at its most magical in the woods under a full moon, and captured by Russell Metty's lovely photography). Grant's been rooting around in the dirt for so long looking for dinosaur bones that it takes him forever to 'get' Hepburn an airborne sprite who never comes down to earth. (Their alchemy here is rarefied, not the commoner sort of reaction they kindled in the stage-bound The Philadelphia Story.)
Last but not least, the movie features the canine talents of Asta (né Skippy), who appeared as himself in the Thin Man series Nick and Nora Charles' lovable cur. Here he plays George, who, barking his stubby tail off, has no qualms about tangling with Baby the leopard. Is there any question that this high-strung wire-haired terrier is and will forever be (pace Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie) Hollywood's top dog? How fitting that he should lend his considerable talents to Bringing Up Baby, the most exquisite comedy of the sound era.
Belated Brilliance.
nycritic20 April 2005
Warning: Spoilers
A complete disaster when it was released, BRINGING UP BABY is screwball comedy to the extreme: absolutely absurd, crackling with dialogue moving faster than a bullet, and unapologetically zany. Starring Katharine Hepburn in her only real foray into playing a "scatterbrained heiress" and Cary Grant as a befuddled paleontologist who's life she disrupts from the moment they meet on a golf course, the story looks almost seems like deliberately crazy plotting: An uptight paleontologist loses the last bone he needs to complete his reconstruction of a dinosaur to an heiresses' dog. This heiress is Katharine Hepburn, and she doesn't make it easier for him, since she's totally self-involved with her own eccentricities, and in one hilarious montage after another we see Grant trying to fetch his bone while getting entangled in the wildest of circumstances, one in particular which includes a tame tiger that is meant for Susan's aunt (May Robson).
Featuring one classic comic scene after another, BRINGING UP BABY is a prime example of a film that was reviled when it came out, most notably because of the arrogant personality of the lead actress and her stature as box-office poison, but one that with repeated views over the years has gained a strong critical praise. While it may be a little too fast in dialogue (and in self-referential in-jokes that only hardcore movie fans will point out) for some people's tastes, just the absurdity of the situation makes it worth watching, and of course, the remarkable chemistry of an athletic Hepburn paired with a dashing Grant.
Remade horribly in 1987 as WHO'S THAT GIRL? with Madonna and Griffith Dunne, it's always good to seek this one out on TCM (which plays it often). Lunatic, but fascinating.
Featuring one classic comic scene after another, BRINGING UP BABY is a prime example of a film that was reviled when it came out, most notably because of the arrogant personality of the lead actress and her stature as box-office poison, but one that with repeated views over the years has gained a strong critical praise. While it may be a little too fast in dialogue (and in self-referential in-jokes that only hardcore movie fans will point out) for some people's tastes, just the absurdity of the situation makes it worth watching, and of course, the remarkable chemistry of an athletic Hepburn paired with a dashing Grant.
Remade horribly in 1987 as WHO'S THAT GIRL? with Madonna and Griffith Dunne, it's always good to seek this one out on TCM (which plays it often). Lunatic, but fascinating.
Classic Screwball Comedy
dj_bassett8 June 2004
Maybe the prototypical example of the breed, in fact. Zoologist Grant (we'd call him a paleontologist nowadays) goes to a golf course to try to wrangle money out of a potential donor: along the way he meets up with Katherine Hepburn, and they have all sorts of wacky misadventures.
Grant's great, though it's not a typical role for him -- he's uptight, buttoned down, smothered. He's clearly the superego character, straitlaced and repressed and anti-life (it's no accident he works with bones). Hepburn was never lovelier than she was here -- she's the id character, all action and movement. There's a dedicated minority of people who hate this movie, mostly I think because they see the things Hepburn's character does as cruel. That's the point. Hepburn's not supposed to be nice -- she's id. We laugh partly because Grant needs to be loosened up, but partly because some of Hepburn's actions are shocking. Ideally, we should be in the same position as Grant in the movie: half-attracted, half-afraid.
Great "rat-a-tat" dialog in the classic Hollywood tradition. I can't think of many screenwriters today who could deliver such dialog. Highly recommended, one of the great Hollywood comedies.
Grant's great, though it's not a typical role for him -- he's uptight, buttoned down, smothered. He's clearly the superego character, straitlaced and repressed and anti-life (it's no accident he works with bones). Hepburn was never lovelier than she was here -- she's the id character, all action and movement. There's a dedicated minority of people who hate this movie, mostly I think because they see the things Hepburn's character does as cruel. That's the point. Hepburn's not supposed to be nice -- she's id. We laugh partly because Grant needs to be loosened up, but partly because some of Hepburn's actions are shocking. Ideally, we should be in the same position as Grant in the movie: half-attracted, half-afraid.
Great "rat-a-tat" dialog in the classic Hollywood tradition. I can't think of many screenwriters today who could deliver such dialog. Highly recommended, one of the great Hollywood comedies.
Great comedy
perfectbond16 December 2003
I really enjoyed this classic screwball comedy. Grant was brilliant as the exasperated zoologist and Hepburn also shines as his troublemaking foil. The supporting cast is also uniformly excellent. The entire cast is of course blessed to be working with first rate material. Baby starts slowly and gradually builds momentum before becoming a comic frenzy. It's hard to believe today that this Howard Hawks masterpiece was a bomb in 1938, causing RKO to drop Hawks and Hepburn. I don't usually gravitate towards films of this sort but I'm glad I gave this gem a chance. I was thoroughly entertained. 9/10.
A true screwball comedy
vincentlynch-moonoi14 September 2013
Warning: Spoilers
There are a lot of films from the 1930s and 1940s that are incorrectly referred to a screwball comedies. This film ought to almost be considered the textbook example of a screwball comedy. Unfortunately, Howard Hawks, the director, didn't even quite get his own film! He though it didn't work because there were no normal characters in the film...which exactly makes it a screwball comedy.
Think of our two main characters. Cary Grant who is a brilliant scientist with very few social skills. Katherine Hepburn who has no intellectual prowess whatsoever, but who has oodles of social skills, though they are a bit unusual. A perfect pairing. Then you have Hepburn's aunt, who now owns a leopard as a pet...who is running after Charles Ruggles, a big game hunter (of sorts). And then you have dinosaur bones versus a dog. What more do you need for a screwball comedy? One of the funniest scenes in film is in this movie -- where Katerine Hepburn's dress falls apart, and he covers it up first with his top hat, and then with his own body...as they walk through a ritzy restaurant! This comedic role is one of Grant's best. His acrobatic/athletic skills fit some of the slapstick perfectly, and his general demeanor is what you never see in any other Cary Grant role. Hepburn reportedly had a lot of difficulty with the comedy, but she comes across well as an almost total airhead. The primary supporting cast is terrific -- May Robson as the eccentric aunt, Charles Ruggles good as the big-game hunter, and a couple of great scenes with veteran comic actor Walter Catlett as a constable. You'll briefly see some other faces -- Ward Bond, and Barry Fitzgerald has a small part.
Most every scene in this film made me at least smile, and a few times I laughed out loud, and that's something I rarely do. I wasn't thrilled with the swinging ladder scene at the close of the movie. That was just stupid, and they could have gotten to the same conclusion with something that would have seemed more realistically possible. But, overall, the movie's a gem...a true screwball comedy.
Think of our two main characters. Cary Grant who is a brilliant scientist with very few social skills. Katherine Hepburn who has no intellectual prowess whatsoever, but who has oodles of social skills, though they are a bit unusual. A perfect pairing. Then you have Hepburn's aunt, who now owns a leopard as a pet...who is running after Charles Ruggles, a big game hunter (of sorts). And then you have dinosaur bones versus a dog. What more do you need for a screwball comedy? One of the funniest scenes in film is in this movie -- where Katerine Hepburn's dress falls apart, and he covers it up first with his top hat, and then with his own body...as they walk through a ritzy restaurant! This comedic role is one of Grant's best. His acrobatic/athletic skills fit some of the slapstick perfectly, and his general demeanor is what you never see in any other Cary Grant role. Hepburn reportedly had a lot of difficulty with the comedy, but she comes across well as an almost total airhead. The primary supporting cast is terrific -- May Robson as the eccentric aunt, Charles Ruggles good as the big-game hunter, and a couple of great scenes with veteran comic actor Walter Catlett as a constable. You'll briefly see some other faces -- Ward Bond, and Barry Fitzgerald has a small part.
Most every scene in this film made me at least smile, and a few times I laughed out loud, and that's something I rarely do. I wasn't thrilled with the swinging ladder scene at the close of the movie. That was just stupid, and they could have gotten to the same conclusion with something that would have seemed more realistically possible. But, overall, the movie's a gem...a true screwball comedy.
bringing up baby
orangehead22513 October 2009
I ready like bringing up baby. I thought the scenes were well put together and they were fast and witty I like the screwball comedy. The one thing that annoyed me was the woman she drive me nuts which made it funny she was great for the part. Fast funny and annoying all in one. As for the man I can't believe he didn't just blow right up a her.She got him in so much trouble. I think the scenes with the real tiger were amazing you could tell that the man wasn't really that comfortable and the woman was fine with it. I think the lighting was good and the movie flowed pretty quickly.I believe if you watch it again you will find all sorts of different things that you missed the first time. The humor was really good this was another movie that i stayed late just to see the ending . Meg
The animal inside ...
cafm20 August 2013
Animals play a significant role in Bringing Up Baby, adding absurdity to the comic situations and its theme of
crazed infatuation. When we first meet him, palaeontologist David Huxley (Grant) is preparing to marry his co-worker Alice Swallow (Walker). Alice, we learn, is a rational, no-nonsense woman who sees marriage as a convenient and rational transaction rather than as an expression of love. As the film opens, David and Alice are putting the final touches on a brontosaurus skeleton that he has been working on for five years. The skeleton seems to be a symbol of the couple's relationship - dry, brittle, tenuous, old and, most importantly, dead.
Enter Susan Vance (Hepburn), whose wild anarchic nature is just what the doctor ordered. She seems, on the surface, hair-brained - and this may be true - but her ditziness is the result of being absolutely, utterly, ridiculously head-over-heals in love (at first sight, as is the case with most l'amour fou scenarios) with David and doing whatever she can to sabotage his plans to marry Alice. Susan's leopard, named Baby, is the symbol of her love for David, for the moment the leopard lays its eyes on him, it is instantly affectionate and follows him around, just as Susan does. Jittery David is, of course, terrified of the beast and all that it represents.
The leopard becomes an increasingly useful symbol as the film continues. At her aunt's estate in Connecticut, Susan releases another leopard its cage, thinking it is Baby captured by zoo officials when in fact it is a rogue leopard from the circus on its way to be gassed after attacking someone. With two leopards on the loose, the analogy becomes unmistakable - the wild leopard that Susan releases is David's libido, free at last after being repressed for so long in a loveless relationship. Indeed, towards the end of the film, when the wild leopard traps the host of characters in the local jail, it is nervous, terrified David who steps up and boldly saves the day.
This I suppose is just one way of reading and enjoying a film like Bringing Up Baby. i think it's interesting that the film announces its interested in exploring psychoanalysis with the inclusion of a character who is a Freudian therapist (Dr Lehman played by Fritz Feld). Psychoanalysis was, of course, very popular among Hollywood screenwriters between the 30s and 50s who adopted all manner of coded symbols for sex after Joseph Breen's Production Code so tightly reasserted control over what could and couldn't be represented on screen. But the fact that Dr Lehman's diagnoses are so far off tells us that the science of the mind is no match for the power of l'amour fou, which turns men and women into wild, irrational carnal beasts.
crazed infatuation. When we first meet him, palaeontologist David Huxley (Grant) is preparing to marry his co-worker Alice Swallow (Walker). Alice, we learn, is a rational, no-nonsense woman who sees marriage as a convenient and rational transaction rather than as an expression of love. As the film opens, David and Alice are putting the final touches on a brontosaurus skeleton that he has been working on for five years. The skeleton seems to be a symbol of the couple's relationship - dry, brittle, tenuous, old and, most importantly, dead.
Enter Susan Vance (Hepburn), whose wild anarchic nature is just what the doctor ordered. She seems, on the surface, hair-brained - and this may be true - but her ditziness is the result of being absolutely, utterly, ridiculously head-over-heals in love (at first sight, as is the case with most l'amour fou scenarios) with David and doing whatever she can to sabotage his plans to marry Alice. Susan's leopard, named Baby, is the symbol of her love for David, for the moment the leopard lays its eyes on him, it is instantly affectionate and follows him around, just as Susan does. Jittery David is, of course, terrified of the beast and all that it represents.
The leopard becomes an increasingly useful symbol as the film continues. At her aunt's estate in Connecticut, Susan releases another leopard its cage, thinking it is Baby captured by zoo officials when in fact it is a rogue leopard from the circus on its way to be gassed after attacking someone. With two leopards on the loose, the analogy becomes unmistakable - the wild leopard that Susan releases is David's libido, free at last after being repressed for so long in a loveless relationship. Indeed, towards the end of the film, when the wild leopard traps the host of characters in the local jail, it is nervous, terrified David who steps up and boldly saves the day.
This I suppose is just one way of reading and enjoying a film like Bringing Up Baby. i think it's interesting that the film announces its interested in exploring psychoanalysis with the inclusion of a character who is a Freudian therapist (Dr Lehman played by Fritz Feld). Psychoanalysis was, of course, very popular among Hollywood screenwriters between the 30s and 50s who adopted all manner of coded symbols for sex after Joseph Breen's Production Code so tightly reasserted control over what could and couldn't be represented on screen. But the fact that Dr Lehman's diagnoses are so far off tells us that the science of the mind is no match for the power of l'amour fou, which turns men and women into wild, irrational carnal beasts.
HIST American Film
s-diblasicrain29 September 2009
"Bringing up Baby" is the perfect definition of the phrase, screwball comedy. Like many others who have watched this movie, I felt it was very over the top and absurd. That being said I believe that it's absurdity was entirely intentional and brilliantly executed.
Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant are both incredible actors and when paired together in "Bringing up Baby" their talent is portrayed at new heights. Cary Grant seems so naturally awkward, nervous and madcap while Katherine Hepburn's performance as a crazy, yet adorable lady-lunatic, appears amazingly fluid and effortless. Hepburn's perfect comedic timing and quick wit and tongue fit perfectly with the extreme speed of the movie.
As over the top and screwy as this comedy is, I believe it to be an undeniably charming and timeless film.
Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant are both incredible actors and when paired together in "Bringing up Baby" their talent is portrayed at new heights. Cary Grant seems so naturally awkward, nervous and madcap while Katherine Hepburn's performance as a crazy, yet adorable lady-lunatic, appears amazingly fluid and effortless. Hepburn's perfect comedic timing and quick wit and tongue fit perfectly with the extreme speed of the movie.
As over the top and screwy as this comedy is, I believe it to be an undeniably charming and timeless film.
This Screwball Comedy Needs An Oiling
daoldiges7 November 2022
I'm a huge fan of Hawk's His Girl Friday, but my enthusiasm for that film does not carry over to Bringing Up Baby. Hepburn and Grant are both solid but the hijinks, slapstick, and banter between the stars simply does not work here. I actually found Bringing Up Baby to be more irritating than entertaining. Grant and Hepburn have worked together quite well, as in The Philadelphia Story, but I think one of the obstacles to this film is that they haven't yet figured out their timing and rhythm to a degree that they work well together. It will come with time but they still had some kinks to work out at this point.
Baby, Oh Where Can You Be?
bkoganbing26 December 2005
Casting Katharine Hepburn in the role she plays her would have been unthinkable years later when her image as a feminist icon was cast in bronze. But she's doing some serious poaching on a young version of the kind of roles Mary Boland or Billie Burke would play. Think of the parts these two women played and you can definitely see Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby if you imagine Boland and Burke years younger.
Bringing Up Baby is one of those beautiful films that really doesn't have a plot. Try to tell someone verbally the plot of this, it cannot be done. From the moment airheaded Kate gets into uptight Cary's car in that parking lot with him chasing her, it's just one madcap situation after another. Howard Hawks directs this film with the appropriate light touch the material requires.
Cary Grant is not the usual suave sophisticate you normally find him cast as either. He's an uptight paleontologist who's biggest thrill up to that point is the arrival of a brontosaurus vertebrae so that he can complete a skeleton. He's also getting married, but the woman he's engaged gives him hints that married life will not be any bed of roses for him. Whether he knows it or not he's ready for the romp Kate has in store for him.
Thirties audiences definitely loved seeing the rich at play. Bringing Up Baby is the definition of escapist entertainment. But one who hasn't the means shouldn't indulge it what Hepburn is doing. They've got a padded cell waiting for anyone who's not rich who indulges in this kind of behavior. Only the rich can afford to be eccentric.
Baby by the way is a tame leopard who Kate's brother sends up from South America. That would be a jaguar by the way, but that's just mere details. Anyway Baby escapes at the same time another leopard from the circus escapes and he's dangerous. I won't go into the confusion there, I couldn't describe it in any event.
May Robson and Charlie Ruggles lend good support. Ruggles who was normally cast against Mary Boland teams up well with May Robson. And my favorite in the supporting cast is Walter Catlett as the small town constable who doesn't know quite what he has on his hands, but is determined to bluff the situation through.
Bringing Up Baby is one of those beautiful films that really doesn't have a plot. Try to tell someone verbally the plot of this, it cannot be done. From the moment airheaded Kate gets into uptight Cary's car in that parking lot with him chasing her, it's just one madcap situation after another. Howard Hawks directs this film with the appropriate light touch the material requires.
Cary Grant is not the usual suave sophisticate you normally find him cast as either. He's an uptight paleontologist who's biggest thrill up to that point is the arrival of a brontosaurus vertebrae so that he can complete a skeleton. He's also getting married, but the woman he's engaged gives him hints that married life will not be any bed of roses for him. Whether he knows it or not he's ready for the romp Kate has in store for him.
Thirties audiences definitely loved seeing the rich at play. Bringing Up Baby is the definition of escapist entertainment. But one who hasn't the means shouldn't indulge it what Hepburn is doing. They've got a padded cell waiting for anyone who's not rich who indulges in this kind of behavior. Only the rich can afford to be eccentric.
Baby by the way is a tame leopard who Kate's brother sends up from South America. That would be a jaguar by the way, but that's just mere details. Anyway Baby escapes at the same time another leopard from the circus escapes and he's dangerous. I won't go into the confusion there, I couldn't describe it in any event.
May Robson and Charlie Ruggles lend good support. Ruggles who was normally cast against Mary Boland teams up well with May Robson. And my favorite in the supporting cast is Walter Catlett as the small town constable who doesn't know quite what he has on his hands, but is determined to bluff the situation through.
Arguably the funniest movie ever made
inframan17 December 2004
They certainly don't come any funnier than this film. The hilarious golf course scene at the beginning is followed immediately by the equally riotous nightclub scene. This is followed by more memorable set pieces & quotable stick-in-your-mind-forever lines than any movie I can think of, including Bank Dick & Night at the Opera.
Grant & Hepburn are brilliant & innovative. I read some place that when Cary Grant was having trouble finding the David character, Howard Hawks gave him the horn rims & told him to do Harold Lloyd. Which he does. Brilliantly.
I can watch this repeatedly with no more flagging interest than listening to a Beethoven symphony or sonata.
Hard to believe it was a big flop when it first came out.
Grant & Hepburn are brilliant & innovative. I read some place that when Cary Grant was having trouble finding the David character, Howard Hawks gave him the horn rims & told him to do Harold Lloyd. Which he does. Brilliantly.
I can watch this repeatedly with no more flagging interest than listening to a Beethoven symphony or sonata.
Hard to believe it was a big flop when it first came out.
A joy
The_Naked_Librarian14 September 2003
It's such a joy to watch these two consummate film actors playing against type and having so much fun doing it, Hepburn as the dizzy whirlwind who talks a mile a minute (she reminds me a bit of Carole Lombard in "My Man Godfrey"), Grant as the absent-minded scientist who, bemused, always seems to be following two steps behind her. Hepburn's line readings are hilarious. I laugh out loud just remembering the look on her face and the way she says, "Wait a minute! There's nothing up there. There's NOTHING up there." Real life is just as absurd as the plot of this movie, but never as much fun. Thank God for the movies!
Possibly THE Very Best American Comedy Ever - Certainly In The Top 10
iamyuno23 January 2014
I am a movie buff. So to say that this is my #1 favorite movie comedy of all time is saying something. But I don't think any movie critic could ever argue against putting this film - at the very least - in the Top 10 very best comedies ever made.
Nor is there a comedy, I believe, that has a greater chemistry than exists between the main characters (including the delightful contributions by character actors May Robson, Charlie Ruggles and Barry Fitzgerald).
You might then wonder why I'm going to confess I would not put it amongst the Top 10 ROMANTIC comedies. It is, at least on the surface, a romantic comedy. But the romantic side of this doesn't work quite as well as the comedy - for my money. Yet, that being said, I'd still argue it should be listed in the Top 50 top romantic comedies ever (which is still saying something). This is not to take away from the film but to say that romance really isn't a strong component of this film - nor was it (I believe) meant to be. It's just a framework upon which to create a comic work of genius. (I'm not sure many would say Hepburn and Grant had a lot of romantic chemistry here. In other words, unlike When Harry Met Sally or The Shop Around The Corner, the resulting romance at the end of this film doesn't warm your heart quite as much; it's not as convincing or moving as other romantic comedies on a romantic level.)
But that's a trifle. To fault it for that is just quibbling. Because here you have two of the greatest actors ever - Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn - at their very funniest. You have a screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde that crackles with wit and hilarity. You have a pace that's like a roller coaster and laughs that will have you on the floor at times.
No male actor was better at comedy than Cary Grant and here he sets the standard for how to do it. No actor can best his performance here, nor have they come close - in my humble opinion. (Grant, of course, put in incredible comic performances earlier in The Awful Truth and later on in Arsenic And Old Lace and other movies; yet I still think he laid the law down especially in this movie. This is how you do it.)
Katharine Hepburn - who was as good a comic actress as serious - was absolutely inspired in this film and was never better. Was there a better female acting performance in a comedy before this movie - funnier, more convincing, with more energy and sophistication? I'd argue not (although Claudette Colbert was brilliant in It Happened One Night and Irene Dunne was stellar in The Awful Truth, etc., etc.). And you'd be hard-pressed to find a better female comedic performance in a movie afterward - although TV's Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett would later raise the bar even higher, on the tube. But I wouldn't be surprised if they learned some lessons from Hepburn here.
This is just a joy ride of genius that - like all great movies - is worth seeing again and again. With its sophisticated side and its more vaudeville-inspired physical humor, this fires on every cylinder and delights over and over again.
Nor is there a comedy, I believe, that has a greater chemistry than exists between the main characters (including the delightful contributions by character actors May Robson, Charlie Ruggles and Barry Fitzgerald).
You might then wonder why I'm going to confess I would not put it amongst the Top 10 ROMANTIC comedies. It is, at least on the surface, a romantic comedy. But the romantic side of this doesn't work quite as well as the comedy - for my money. Yet, that being said, I'd still argue it should be listed in the Top 50 top romantic comedies ever (which is still saying something). This is not to take away from the film but to say that romance really isn't a strong component of this film - nor was it (I believe) meant to be. It's just a framework upon which to create a comic work of genius. (I'm not sure many would say Hepburn and Grant had a lot of romantic chemistry here. In other words, unlike When Harry Met Sally or The Shop Around The Corner, the resulting romance at the end of this film doesn't warm your heart quite as much; it's not as convincing or moving as other romantic comedies on a romantic level.)
But that's a trifle. To fault it for that is just quibbling. Because here you have two of the greatest actors ever - Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn - at their very funniest. You have a screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde that crackles with wit and hilarity. You have a pace that's like a roller coaster and laughs that will have you on the floor at times.
No male actor was better at comedy than Cary Grant and here he sets the standard for how to do it. No actor can best his performance here, nor have they come close - in my humble opinion. (Grant, of course, put in incredible comic performances earlier in The Awful Truth and later on in Arsenic And Old Lace and other movies; yet I still think he laid the law down especially in this movie. This is how you do it.)
Katharine Hepburn - who was as good a comic actress as serious - was absolutely inspired in this film and was never better. Was there a better female acting performance in a comedy before this movie - funnier, more convincing, with more energy and sophistication? I'd argue not (although Claudette Colbert was brilliant in It Happened One Night and Irene Dunne was stellar in The Awful Truth, etc., etc.). And you'd be hard-pressed to find a better female comedic performance in a movie afterward - although TV's Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett would later raise the bar even higher, on the tube. But I wouldn't be surprised if they learned some lessons from Hepburn here.
This is just a joy ride of genius that - like all great movies - is worth seeing again and again. With its sophisticated side and its more vaudeville-inspired physical humor, this fires on every cylinder and delights over and over again.
Charming and definitely funny, but not as good as I expected
abum1903 August 2006
I liked this movie a lot, but I think I would've liked it more if I hadn't seen His Girl Friday first. It seems to me that His Girl Friday is a lot better executed as a whole and in its parts than Bringing Up Baby. I understand that this one is the film people bring up when talking about Howard Hawks's screwball comedies, and rightfully so. But when you stand this up next to His Girl Friday, it doesn't read as well, simply because from the very beginning of His Girl Friday we know who the characters are and what their motives will be as the story progresses, but at the beginning of Bringing Up Baby the characters are muddled and confusing. In His Girl Friday, the actions of the main characters are hilarious and the motives behind those actions are complicated and human, and we understand that. Here the actions are also funny, but the motives are simpler. His Girl Friday is more realistic and human, and in my opinion that makes it the better movie.
Even so, there is a lot in this movie to love. That's one of the movie's charms- the way that the characters develop from simple caricatures into people we can't help but loving. That must have been one of Hawks's gifts- providing us with characters that are just strange at the start and slowly develop into real people. Sure, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are as funny as can be, as expected, and the supporting cast is great. Some of the slapstick gags are a little stale, but there are enough priceless bits to make up for the not-so-priceless ones, especially near the end.
I suppose I'll end up in IMDb hell for saying His Girl Friday is better than this movie, but I can't help it. It's intriguing to me that Bringing Up Baby is only 10 above His Girl Friday on the Top 250. Maybe I'll appreciate Bringing Up Baby more after a second viewing, but for now, I have to say that it's good, but it didn't live up to my expectations.
Even so, there is a lot in this movie to love. That's one of the movie's charms- the way that the characters develop from simple caricatures into people we can't help but loving. That must have been one of Hawks's gifts- providing us with characters that are just strange at the start and slowly develop into real people. Sure, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are as funny as can be, as expected, and the supporting cast is great. Some of the slapstick gags are a little stale, but there are enough priceless bits to make up for the not-so-priceless ones, especially near the end.
I suppose I'll end up in IMDb hell for saying His Girl Friday is better than this movie, but I can't help it. It's intriguing to me that Bringing Up Baby is only 10 above His Girl Friday on the Top 250. Maybe I'll appreciate Bringing Up Baby more after a second viewing, but for now, I have to say that it's good, but it didn't live up to my expectations.
Screwball at its most brilliant and frenetic
gaityr2 February 2002
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. ;)
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. ;)
Good writing, great comic performances and many laughs along the way.
anthonygreen9312 November 2012
Film Review – Bringing Up Baby
Howard Hawk's screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby (1938), that entails a series of misunderstandings occurring one after the other between a polite paleontologist, a gorgeous clumsy woman and a leopard named Baby. After their run in at a golf course, Susan (Katharine Hepburn) convinces David (Cary Grant) to help take care of her auntie's pet leopard, as she believes David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist. A series of comical errors ensue throughout the film played out by excellent overall performances by the entire cast.
The plot was at times very frustrating to follow, due to the absurd misunderstandings that consist of stupidity too hard to believe. This is most prominent towards the end when somehow everyone involved ends up in trouble with the police. However, aside from that, the film is a joy to watch for the brilliant acting and screen presence of Cary Grant and for the wonderful comic timing by Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn and Grant share great on-screen chemistry which at first seems to elicit the dynamic of a brother/sister friendship. Though as the film progresses, their bizarre relationship unfolds into quite an unlikely romance that didn't seem entirely convincing.
In many scenes, Hawks and the editor, George Hively, deliberately showed long durations between cuts, eliciting a dynamic that resonates with an on-stage play. This decision was cleverly made to accentuate the acting skills of the cast members, particularly Hepburn and Grant. The camera lets the comedy unfold through their performances without interruption. This technique allows them the freedom that two great actors require to get the best out of their talents. It is a technique that has since been used throughout cinema for decades.
Bringing Up Baby is a classical film that consists of good writing, great comic performances and many laughs along the way.
Howard Hawk's screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby (1938), that entails a series of misunderstandings occurring one after the other between a polite paleontologist, a gorgeous clumsy woman and a leopard named Baby. After their run in at a golf course, Susan (Katharine Hepburn) convinces David (Cary Grant) to help take care of her auntie's pet leopard, as she believes David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist. A series of comical errors ensue throughout the film played out by excellent overall performances by the entire cast.
The plot was at times very frustrating to follow, due to the absurd misunderstandings that consist of stupidity too hard to believe. This is most prominent towards the end when somehow everyone involved ends up in trouble with the police. However, aside from that, the film is a joy to watch for the brilliant acting and screen presence of Cary Grant and for the wonderful comic timing by Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn and Grant share great on-screen chemistry which at first seems to elicit the dynamic of a brother/sister friendship. Though as the film progresses, their bizarre relationship unfolds into quite an unlikely romance that didn't seem entirely convincing.
In many scenes, Hawks and the editor, George Hively, deliberately showed long durations between cuts, eliciting a dynamic that resonates with an on-stage play. This decision was cleverly made to accentuate the acting skills of the cast members, particularly Hepburn and Grant. The camera lets the comedy unfold through their performances without interruption. This technique allows them the freedom that two great actors require to get the best out of their talents. It is a technique that has since been used throughout cinema for decades.
Bringing Up Baby is a classical film that consists of good writing, great comic performances and many laughs along the way.
No matter how much you want to strangle Kate here, you can't, 'cause you're laughing too much!
mark.waltz11 May 2013
Warning: Spoilers
This is one of those films that you must re-visit perhaps once a year, because in spite of its place in Hollywood as a legendary failure (that resulted in Katharine Hepburn being listed as box office poison), it is one of the 10 funniest movies ever made. Hepburn and Cary Grant are an opposite sex version of Laurel and Hardy here, so dumb they're smart, and so over-the-top, you can't get enough of them. Grant is an expert on dinosaurs, and is missing the one important tail bone he needs to complete a 10-year project. That bone will go missing, thanks to George, a spunky pooch (who happens to look like Nick and Nora Charles' dog Asta) who grabs it then gets distracted by playing with a lovable leopard named Baby. If George and Baby weren't enough to drive Grant to wish he was extinct like the dinosaurs, then Hepburn might, yet there is something about this dizzy heiress that makes him remember that he's a man, not a bone chaser.
O.K., I admit that I would be greatly annoyed to be stalked by a character as wacko and interfering as Hepburn, but watching Grant deal with her is a delightfully witty voyage. From the moment she steals his golf ball, dents his car, then tears his tuxedo jacket, you know she's attached to him like glue to a Popsicle stick. And when he accidentally retaliates and rips her dress, that sticky situation leads to even more. They are not quite the only insane ones here. Everybody has some neurotic disorder about them, even the psychiatrist (Fritz Feld) whom Hepburn and Grant encounter in a fancy restaurant and later in the country where Baby has taken up temporary residence on Feld's roof. May Robson is perplexed from the moment she sees Grant wearing a frilly ladies' robe, and Charles Ruggles adds more befuddlement into the mix when he shows up. A dipsomaniac caretaker (Barry Fitzgerald), frustrated sheriff (Walter Catlett) and Grant's jilted fiancée (Tala Birell) are others involved in this mix, which also includes a second leopard whom even Baby might run from if they were to encounter each other in the dark. Director Howard Hawks mixes everything together seamlessly, resulting in a film of sheer perfection.
Why this flopped in its initial release has never really been identified, except perhaps that Hepburn's involvement in a comedy after so many serious dramas seemed like something to skip as a misguided shot in the dark. She really proves her meddle in comedy when she pretends to be a gangster's moll, utilizing an accent that is downright hysterical. But the movie audiences in 1938 would have to wait for its rediscovery later on, and like so many other films, this one has risen above its initial failure to become one of the all-time classics, a pleasure from start to finish. Peter Bogdanovich's "What's Up Doc?" pretty much updated the plot, replacing the two leopards with identical suitcases, yet utilizing the same ensemble types of wackos to make it almost equally as enjoyable and one of the best modern comedy classics.
O.K., I admit that I would be greatly annoyed to be stalked by a character as wacko and interfering as Hepburn, but watching Grant deal with her is a delightfully witty voyage. From the moment she steals his golf ball, dents his car, then tears his tuxedo jacket, you know she's attached to him like glue to a Popsicle stick. And when he accidentally retaliates and rips her dress, that sticky situation leads to even more. They are not quite the only insane ones here. Everybody has some neurotic disorder about them, even the psychiatrist (Fritz Feld) whom Hepburn and Grant encounter in a fancy restaurant and later in the country where Baby has taken up temporary residence on Feld's roof. May Robson is perplexed from the moment she sees Grant wearing a frilly ladies' robe, and Charles Ruggles adds more befuddlement into the mix when he shows up. A dipsomaniac caretaker (Barry Fitzgerald), frustrated sheriff (Walter Catlett) and Grant's jilted fiancée (Tala Birell) are others involved in this mix, which also includes a second leopard whom even Baby might run from if they were to encounter each other in the dark. Director Howard Hawks mixes everything together seamlessly, resulting in a film of sheer perfection.
Why this flopped in its initial release has never really been identified, except perhaps that Hepburn's involvement in a comedy after so many serious dramas seemed like something to skip as a misguided shot in the dark. She really proves her meddle in comedy when she pretends to be a gangster's moll, utilizing an accent that is downright hysterical. But the movie audiences in 1938 would have to wait for its rediscovery later on, and like so many other films, this one has risen above its initial failure to become one of the all-time classics, a pleasure from start to finish. Peter Bogdanovich's "What's Up Doc?" pretty much updated the plot, replacing the two leopards with identical suitcases, yet utilizing the same ensemble types of wackos to make it almost equally as enjoyable and one of the best modern comedy classics.
Avoid at all costs
GOB-226 September 1999
Let me start by saying that Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn are 2 of my favorite performers. Therefore I figured that since they were together in this film that it should be an incredible movie. That was a mistake I hope I never repeat. First, it was appaling to see someone as intelligent and talented as Katherine Hepburn playing an airhead that NEVER SHUTS UP!!!! Cary Grant's performance was ok as far as the acting is concerned, but all his lines are lame and I thaught his character was almost as annoying as Katherine Hepburn's. Could have been much better. Especially if it was never made. The Shawshank Redemption, Spartacus, or Terminator 2 were much more deserving of a spot on the AFI's top 100 list than this dud.
Bringing Up Baby Analysis - Jacob Howard
j-howard-9166319 February 2020
Warning: Spoilers
The movie was well developed when it was first release. The cinematography and editing of the movie was well done in terms of the perspective it provided. Throughout the movie it had natural lighting, nothing spectacular. The editing style depended on what was going on in the scene, but for the most part it felt jarring, probably to add to the quirky dialogue and movement from the actors. For example when Major Applegate and Mr. Gogarty were being chased by the aggressive leper.
The stunts and display of the lepers was pretty unrealistic. For example, when Susan was swinging on the ladder in the museum at the end of the movie; she would've fallen over sooner then she did. The lepers in most of the movie were real but in some points of the movie, they used a leper puppet for Baby. For example when Baby was in Susan's apartment, there was one part of the scene where the leper was swapped out for a puppet.
The stunts and display of the lepers was pretty unrealistic. For example, when Susan was swinging on the ladder in the museum at the end of the movie; she would've fallen over sooner then she did. The lepers in most of the movie were real but in some points of the movie, they used a leper puppet for Baby. For example when Baby was in Susan's apartment, there was one part of the scene where the leper was swapped out for a puppet.
Far more irritating than funny
grantss30 September 2018
Dr. David Huxley has two reasons to be excited. He is about to be married and the final piece to a brontosaurus, the showpiece to his museum exhibit, will soon be in his possession. Furthermore, if he plays his cards right, a wealthy donor will donate $1 million to his museum, to aid his palaeontological collection. Unfortunately, he meets Susan, a woman who seems destined to unintentionally destroy his life. Huxley soon finds himself playing nursemaid to Baby, her leopard.
Directed by Howards Hawks and starring Cary Grant as Huxley and Katharine Hepburn as Susan, this movie is ostensibly a comedy classic. That's hard to fathom, unless extreme irritation is classified as comedy.
The irritation starts almost from the word go. Somehow we are meant to be believe that someone stealing another person's car and then smashing it up in nonchalant fashion is funny. Susan is incredibly annoying and there is no light at the end of the tunnel - the annoyance continues throughout the movie, down to and including the final scene.
It's not just Susan - the whole 'plot' is random and just involves dumb things happening. Yes, it's slapstick but there is hardly anything funny about it.
Directed by Howards Hawks and starring Cary Grant as Huxley and Katharine Hepburn as Susan, this movie is ostensibly a comedy classic. That's hard to fathom, unless extreme irritation is classified as comedy.
The irritation starts almost from the word go. Somehow we are meant to be believe that someone stealing another person's car and then smashing it up in nonchalant fashion is funny. Susan is incredibly annoying and there is no light at the end of the tunnel - the annoyance continues throughout the movie, down to and including the final scene.
It's not just Susan - the whole 'plot' is random and just involves dumb things happening. Yes, it's slapstick but there is hardly anything funny about it.
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