#97 - Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby, made in 1938 staring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, was the most extreme comedy of errors i've seen since, well, The Comedy of Errors! I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it took me a while to grow accustomed to Hepburn's role; I am so fond of her cool and collected screen presence, that seeing her as an eccentric heiress (slap-stick in stow) was initially disarming, but inevitably charming! She and Grant make a great combination, forming just the right amount of insanity and sense. I laughed often, and for good reason. This movie did not earn it's laughs through crude humor, or prejudiced generalizations, but was very intentional and winning.

Grant plays a timid paleontologist who is harried by a demanding finance, an expectant boss, and the public who have been waiting to see the dinosaur he has been assembling for several years, and has now almost completed. His adventure begins as he is playing golf with a man who may be able to convince a wealthy widow to donate one million dollars to the museum. His flattery is interrupted when a rather illogical young lady accidently steals his golf ball, then car. He then repeatedly runs into her at different occasions, seemingly only when he is trying to resolve a problem she had created the last time he saw her. When he has grown to, reasonably enough, dread her, is when she decides she needs him. After she is gifted a leopard named "Baby" she decides to keep it at her country home, and, mistaking a paleontologist for a zoologist, she implores Grant to assist her until he agrees.

Their misadventure continues, with Hepburn deciding she loves Grant, and attempting to keep him from returning home to be married. There is a leopard hunt, a German psychologist, repetitive singing, and one excellent gangster accent employed by Hepburn in a tight spot. At times it got predictable, but only in a way that you would expect a Shakespeare comedy to be predictable. You know, where everything is so topsy-turvy that you are just waiting for that final character to come stumbling through the door.

Altogether, it was enjoyable. There is nothing like watching Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn inch along the wall of a restaurant, attempting to hide the giant rip down the back of her dress, all the time them reprimanding each other for "crowding". The only unfortunate part was that, at times, they spoke too fast to be easily discernible (I admit, I happily employed the subtitles button. Hey! Good for foreign films, and good for the golden age of Hollywood!)