"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
cantankerous Irishman. (85/100)
A nonstop profusion of hilarious calamities coincidences and misunderstandings ensue when an accident-prone heiress turns a sheltered scientist's life...More at Family Video
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