Review of IMDb Top 250 Films - Bringing Up Baby (1938)

I intend to conduct a review of the top 250 films on the IMDb database. At a rate of two per month this will still take forever as the list constantly changes. I don't claim to be a very knowledgeable or intellectual film critic but have tremendous confidence in my ability to discern good direction, script and acting, and to expose films which have enjoyed / endured an undeserved reputation in my perhaps arrogant opinion. There may be a few minor spoilers in my reviews.

Bringing Up Baby - Rating: 4 out of 6

Bringing Up Baby starts off superbly. A serious, upright but hapless museum curator Dr David Huxley (Cary Grant) is engaged to an unsuitable fiancee, but is pursued by a madcap, fast-talking and fun-loving young woman Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn), ostensibly Cary’s opposite and nemesis. Hepburn is wonderful and looks lovely, and the first 2/3 of the picture has a lively flow to it with fast pace, plenty of comic but not overly unrealistic situations, and extremely funny dialogue. Grant may look a touch staged / wooden but still well within the realms of realism and his uptight performance is a marvellous foil to Hepburn’s “life and soul“. The scene early on in the restaurant is nothing short of a masterpiece, and when Hepburn is talking on the ‘phone to Grant about the leopard unexpectedly given to her by her brother and the leopard meanders into camerashot just when it does.…well, that’s priceless!

They then travel to Connecticut to Susan’s aunt's home to drop off the leopard via some more funny little adventures; the battleaxe aunt and her easygoing fuddy-duddy male friend, completely oblivious to the leopard situation, add to the fun, and although the film loses its theatrical, scene-specific tightness, the script loses none of its wit! So far, so 5 out of 6. Then the leopard is lost and from then on the situations become a trifle more laboured and confusing (a new leopard is introduced) and the film continues much more on the strength of its screwball comedy than any viable plot. Even the Grant/Hepburn comedy act takes a back seat. It's still mostly pleasant to watch but eventually tedium sets in, the screwball element starts to jar, Hepburn's liveliness turns to screeching, everything becomes too noisy and farcical and we are no longer so involved.

So the madcap situations start to take over from the burgeoning relationship between Susan and David rather than act as a vehicle for it, and when everyone ends up in jail we feel the film has lost it. Thankfully the last two short scenes are entertaining enough to save the film from shame but not enough to re-obtain the lost star from this review!

Memorable quotes: “Susan, when a man is wrestling a leopard in the middle of a pond, he’s in no position to run!”
To enquiring shopkeeper and customer after buying 60 lb of raw meat for the leopard: “Oh, this isn’t for me, it’s for Baby!” Cue shocked faces!
"Oh poor darling Susan: she's helpless without me"!!