A wacky, quick-lipped comedy from Howard Hawks, which foreshadows the director's sharper, later work on His Girl Friday. Bringing Up Baby follows a tightly-wound paleontologist (Cary Grant), out of his element on a fundraising mission, who crosses paths with an accident-prone chatterbox socialite (Katherine Hepburn) and her housebroken pet leopard. Grant's mild-mannered professor is immediately frustrated by the entanglement, but the more he struggles to extricate himself, the tighter he's bound. The girl is quicksand, basically, and she revels in the havoc she plays upon her unsuspecting prey. Eventually, somehow, the two develop a strong affection for one another, but not before they've ostracized a benefactor, misplaced a priceless fossil and spent a few hours behind bars.
Grant was no stranger to comedies (his collaboration with Hawks would continue in the aforementioned Friday), but this was Hepburn's first foray into the genre. Rumor has it she needed a little behind-the-scenes coaching, but she pulls her weight in the finished product and shows strong chemistry with her counterpart. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of laughs in the first hour, especially given the movie's age, but it wanes on the home stretch and I didn't really care for either of the main characters: one irritable wet blanket, one scatter-brained troublemaker. They get into some good scrapes together, but fail to redeem their intrinsic faults and don't quite merit the happy send-off they both enjoy.
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2022-10-14T19:44:52Z
A wacky, quick-lipped comedy from Howard Hawks, which foreshadows the director's sharper, later work on His Girl Friday. Bringing Up Baby follows a tightly-wound paleontologist (Cary Grant), out of his element on a fundraising mission, who crosses paths with an accident-prone chatterbox socialite (Katherine Hepburn) and her housebroken pet leopard. Grant's mild-mannered professor is immediately frustrated by the entanglement, but the more he struggles to extricate himself, the tighter he's bound. The girl is quicksand, basically, and she revels in the havoc she plays upon her unsuspecting prey. Eventually, somehow, the two develop a strong affection for one another, but not before they've ostracized a benefactor, misplaced a priceless fossil and spent a few hours behind bars.
Grant was no stranger to comedies (his collaboration with Hawks would continue in the aforementioned Friday), but this was Hepburn's first foray into the genre. Rumor has it she needed a little behind-the-scenes coaching, but she pulls her weight in the finished product and shows strong chemistry with her counterpart. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of laughs in the first hour, especially given the movie's age, but it wanes on the home stretch and I didn't really care for either of the main characters: one irritable wet blanket, one scatter-brained troublemaker. They get into some good scrapes together, but fail to redeem their intrinsic faults and don't quite merit the happy send-off they both enjoy.