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DVD Bringing Up Baby (Two-Disc Special Edition)
"The love impulse in man," says a psychiatrist in Bringing Up Baby, "frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict." That's for sure. For a primer on the rules and regulations of the classic screwball comedy, which throws love and conflict into close proximity, look no further. A straight-laced paleontologist (Cary Grant) loses a dinosaur bone to a dog belonging to free-spirited heiress Katharine Hepburn. In trying to retrieve said bone, Grant is drawn into the vortex surrounding the delicious Hepburn, which becomes a flirtatious pas de deux that will transform both of them. Director Howard Hawks plays the complications as a breathless escalation of their "love impulse," yet the movie is nonetheless romantic for all its speed. (Hawks's His Girl Friday, also with Grant, goes even faster.) Grant and Hepburn are a match made in movie heaven, in sync with each other throughout. Not a great box-office success when first released, Bringing Up Baby has since taken its place as a high-water mark of the screwball form, and it was used as a model for Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?--Robert Horton
Review(s): DVD Bringing Up Baby (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Without question, one of the finest films of all time
Howard Hawks did more than just direct two superstars in this madcap of a film. He started a genre loosely called,"machine gun dialoge." Films of today do the same thing. A little film called "Caddyshack," did it. A rapid fire of dialogue between two actors. It requires the movie-goer to shake their head back and forth in an attempt to keep up. But "Bring up Baby" did it first and did it best.
Actually a flop at the box office upon its release, it almost distroyed the career of box office legend Katherine Hepburn. It required Ms. Hepburn to buy out her contract with the studio, it lost that much money. But over the years it has become a classic piece of flim history.
The film is one madcap adventure after another. And was considered risque for its time. In the opening scene, we see Cary Grant's character sitting high atop a dinosaur, with a bone his hand. His fiance is down below, and David (Cary's character) is explaining to her of the bone he is holding. Upon being asked by his fiance as to where the bone belongs, David replies, "I believe I will put in the tail," to which comes the response, "Oh David, you put it in the tail yesterday, and it didn't fit." This piece of dialogue was almost scrubbed by the ultra conservative MPAA.
But what a fantastic film. An excellent script, and a scene stealing bit from character actor Charles Ruggle who plays a big game hunter. This is a film to be enjoyed by those young and young at heart. A true delight.
"...there are limits to what a man can bear!"
Often considered the definitive screwball comedy, BRINGING UP BABY is Howard Hawks's masterpiece of fast talk, breakneck comic timing, romantic misadventure, and general wackiness. The brilliantly witty dialogue and wicked pace of this film proved to be hugely influential in the years succeeding its production, but no film has managed to surpass this one in its genre.
Cary Grant stars as the serious but absent-minded and awkward Dr. David Huxley, a paleontologist who has spent the last four years assembling a brontosaurus skeleton and is hoping to win an important endowment for his museum. Katherine Hepburn plays the zany society heiress Susan Vance who latches on to the nerdy Huxley on the eve of his wedding day and won't let him out of her sight. Falling in love with him on a whim, she is determined to make him love her too.
The frantic pace of misadventure that falls upon Huxley and Susan does not let up through the entire film. Centered on searches for a lost dinosaur bone and a pet leopard named "Baby," the action is driven by her increasingly daft and wild efforts to romantically capture his interest which result in an increasingly absurd set of mishaps. The daffy and charmingly annoying Susan flusters the strait-laced Huxley causing him to progressively abandon all decorum and propriety, much to his embarrassment.
Popping up along the path of these misadventures are a rich and stodgy aunt (May Robson), a stuttering big-game hunter (Charlie Ruggles), a drunken gardener (Barry Fitzgerald), a clueless constable (Walter Catlett), a pompous psychiatrist (Fritz Feld), a straight-laced fiancee (Virginia Walker), and a cagey fox terrier (Asta). Nearly all come together in the climactic jailhouse sequence that wraps up and resolves much of the high jinks of this picture.
BRINGING UP BABY is one of the greatest and most enduring comedies on film. Versatile director Hawks literally defined the genre of screwball though, to our loss, Hepburn never starred in another one. Thoroughly accessible to modern audiences, anyone who loves movie comedy should allow themselves the pleasure of this film.
Jeremy W. Forstadt
Grant at his best in this madcap comedy
When "Bringing Up Baby" came out, it was such a box-office disaster that Katharine Hepburn was labelled "box office poison." More than 60 years later, it's unimaginable to me why this movie was such a bomb in 1938.
True, the story makes no sense. Basically a nerdy paleontologist Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) runs into an airheaded heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn). Hepburn uses all sorts of tricks to stay with David, including a tame leopard named Baby and a dog named George. David meanwhile is engaged but finds himself drawn into Susan's world when the dog George steals a precious dinosaur bone David needs to complete a fossil model.
Sound silly? It is, but it's also hilarious. Hepburn isn't my favorite actress, but here she's utterly charming as the airheaded heiress. She talks a mile a minute, and her breathless infatuation of the stuffy David is truly funny. And Cary Grant? Was he not the most underrated actor of his generation? Despite his suave handsomeness its important to remember Grant got his start in vaudeville, and he has the vaudeville's instincts of doing anything for a laugh. In one memorable scene at Susan's aunt's house, he is seen wearing a fur-lined bathrobe. When asked why he is so dressed, Grant jumps up and down, pumps his fists, and says, "Because I just went GAY all of a sudden!"
Director Howard Hawks is also responsible for the enduring appeal of this movie. The movie is fast and furious, with a script that is kooky and witty at the same time. Some good lines: "Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but - well, there haven't been any quiet moments." "Um, hmm. 'The love impulse in men frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict.'" There's also the running gag of Grant and Hepburn singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to the leopard Baby. Their off-key warbling is wonderfully endearing.
"Bringing Up Baby" makes no pretense to be "about" anything. It just wants to be funny and entertaining. And it is.
Related DVD's Bringing Up Baby (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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