Movie Review: Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Swing Time

Note: This is #12 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

It’s not like I’m particularly familiar with actors like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, but I can tell you that when I hear them I don’t automatically think “screwball comedy.” And yet here we have them in Bringing up Baby, which really couldn’t possibly get any more screwball. It’s the story of a paleontologist, a dog, a leopard, a ditzy socialite, another leopard, and an intercostal clavicle. It’s also kind of funny.

Grant plays David Huxley, a fairly nerdy paleontologist trying to complete his brontosaurus skeleton, secure a $1 million grant for his museum, and figure out his dead fish of a fiance. Through random acts of silliness he get entangled with Hepburn’s character of Susan Vance, who is three things: smitten with Huxley, completely scatterbrained, and in possession of a (partially) domesticated leopard named “Baby.” Thanks to a cascade of accidents and Vance’s unwavering infatuation with Huxley, the two end up taking Baby out to the country home of Vance’s aunt, who just turns out to be key to Huxley’s securing his $1 million museum grant. Hilarity ensues all along the way.

What makes this movie work is the interplay between Grant and Hepburn. While, despite his best efforts, Grant is too handsome and suave for me to quite fully accept him as a bumbling nerd, he gets close enough for Hepburn to work with. She really steals the show, giving us a frantic mix of ditzy energy, admirable stupidity, blind infatuation, and single minded boldness that keeps things moving. And move it does. The film is fast-paced, sometimes to the point of being spastic, with people talking over each other and multiple jokes flying at the same time.

What also struck me about the movie was how quotable it is. Here’s a few examples of lines that made me laugh out loud:

[After Huxley discovers a leopard in Susan’s apartment]
Huxley: Susan, you have to get out of this apartment!
Vance: I can’t, I have a lease.

[Vance is reading a letter about the leopard Baby]
Vance: “He’s three years old, gentle as a kitten, and likes dogs.” I wonder whether Mark means that he eats dogs or is fond of them?

[After Vance loses a heel from one shoe and has to stand lop-sided]
Vance: I was born on the side of a hill!

[After Vance pretends to be a gangster and is still limping from the broken shoe heel]
Police Chief: Say, you’ve got a bad limp there. Did you get shot up in one of those bank robberies?
Vance: No, I just lost my heel.

Police Chief: [Glancing back at Huxley in his jail cell] Well, don’t worry about him.

So it’s actually pretty funny. It’ll be interesting to contrast the other Grant and Hepburn performances I see during this 52-in-52 challenge. Trailer below.

As a kind of post-script to this review, it’s interesting that out of the 12 “classic” movies I’ve watched so far for this little project, seven of them have been comedies. That number jumps to nine if you’re more generous with your definition of “comedy” and allow It Happened One Night and Swing Time. But looking at the “great” films of the last few years, you’d be really hard pressed to find more than a handful of comedies. You have to go all the way back to 1977’s Annie Hall to find any Academy Award Best Picture winner resembling a comedy –and that award SHOULD have gone to Star Wars that year anyway. And looking at my list of upcoming movies, it seems like Bringing Up Baby is one of the last comedies on the list.

Why is that? Why are so many comedies from the 20s and 30s considered classics while the comedies of the 80s, 90s, and 00s aren’t?

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