Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Grade: 85
"Bringing Up Baby" is the first of four screwball comedies starring Cary Grant and directed by Howard Hawks. While the second film, "His Girl Friday", is considered to be the best, the fact is that all four films are excellent and of nearly equal quality. "I Was a Male War Bride" and "Monkey Business" are the last two films, made about a decade later than "His Girl Friday".
"Bringing Up Baby" has a deceptively simple storyline. Grant is a blustering, bumbling, bespectacled paleontologist, who has spent the last four years assembling a brontosaurus skeleton. His fiance is lovely but frigid, and henpecks him mercilessly. They are to be wed the next day.
Grant is given the task of convincing a wealthy philanthropist to donate a million dollars to the museum that employs him. Attempts at securing this endowment are endangered by Grant's encounters with Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn has fallen for Grant, and causes endless troubles for him in an attempt to get his attention.
The plot relies on several incredible coincidences. Hepburn lives with her aunt, who just happens to be the wealthy philanthropist. Grant just happens to be getting married the next day. Hepburn lies to her aunt, saying that Grant is a big game hunter. It just happens that the aunt's dinner guest is also a big game hunter. Finally, what are the odds that two leopards would be roaming the woods of Connecticut on the same night?
While these coincidences would be infuriating in a serious drama, they are enjoyable here, perhaps due to the expressions of alarm and confusion they cause on Grant's face. Grant was a terrific comic actor, and a perfect foil for Hepburn's imaginative machinations. Grant's character struggles to find normalcy, and to escape from Hepburn, but he ends up bound ever closer to her, and in increasingly ridiculous situations.
There are some really funny scenes in "Bringing Up Baby". My favorite has Hepburn dragging a wild leopard by a leash, and berating it for its resistance. Another great scene has Hepburn and Grant frantically seeking a dinosaur bone, digging holes at random in the front yard. Character actor Charles Ruggles has a great turn as a game hunter fond of imitating leopard calls, while Barry Fitzgerald once again plays a cantakerous Irishman.
kollers@mpsi.net http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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