lasttimeisaw
Peter Bogdanovich's tremendously successful slapstick comedy is a hearty homage to the screwball genre booming from the 30s, Howard Hawks' BRINGING UP BABY (1938) in particular. A San Francisco-based romp spawned by four identical plaid overnight bags in one hotel.The main plot-line tells of an adventurous, tomboyish young woman Judy Maxwell (Straisand), pops out from nowhere, but wherever she goes, accidents breed. So when she sets her eyes on a staid but attractive blond musicologist Howard Bannister (O'Neal) from Iowa Conservatory of Music, nothing can stop her from wilfully hogging him as the apple of her eye. Howard is in town for obtaining a grant for his study, which concerns with igneous rocks, with his ill-paired bossy fiancée Eunice Burns (Kahn in her rip-roaring screen debut with her scene-stealing bouffant hairdo), passively endures Judy's wanton intrusion, and occasionally tries to retort but to his constant dismay, of little avail. However, Judy really is a humdinger, with her little help, Howard is "this" close to procure the grant and vanquishes his rival, the holier-than-thou continental scholar Hugh Simon (the hysterical farceur Kenneth Mars, hilariously indulges in his snobbery mannerism and foreign accents).The bags-swapping caper, operated by bit players, is unbeknownst to our protagonists, one of the bag contains top-secret papers and attracts a government agent in pursuit, another one is the valuable jewellery collection from a wealthy hotel patron, which incites larceny from two hotel employees. The other two bags belong to Judy and Howard respectively, one is her personal items and the other is stuffed with his precious rocks. With a brisk and whole-heartedly comical pace, the implausible cat-and-mouse game reaches its apex in the spanking 11-minutes car-chasing stunt wonderfully cashes in on the special terrain of San Francisco's sloping roads, a Chinese dragon costume and a gigantic plate-glass, appended with an uproarious skit in court where adds some padding to Judy's back-story.Ryan O'Neal does a fine job in acting dumb but desirable in his deadpan antics, and Barbra Streisand, feels over-exerts herself to ooze credibility in a superfluously conceived character, but retains her charisma with irresistible strains from Cole Porter, including the theme song YOU'RE THE TOP. Madeline Kahn is a god-send bonanza to the silver screen as a virtuoso comedienne, who is spunkily deprived of self-consciousness and pretence to lampoon a larger-than-life laughing-stock, after all, the film serves as a raucous harbinger of her, O'Neal and Bogdanovich's next consummate collaboration in PAPER MOON (1973).
Blake Peterson
If Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, and 1930s cinema don't mean anything to you, then What's Up, Doc? might not either. What's Up, Doc? is so good, though, you may start caring about those films and those directors and that era. The 1940s had film noir, the '50s had decadent, hip romantic comedies, and the '60s started cute and then went a little crazy (you cannot define them). Meanwhile, the '30s had the screwball comedy, a subgenre in which every character speaks like they're competing for the fastest talker in the world award and gets into situations you'd only find in your worst nightmares (e.g., cat-and- mouse games with leopards, falling in love with con artists/charming eccentrics). In other words, there's nothing better.Apparently, Peter Bogdanovich thinks so too. He began his career as Martin Scorsese's brotha-from-anotha-motha (critically, that is) but has slowly faded, in terms of popularity and critical adoration (the last film he directed was The Cat's Meow, a fluffer released in 2001). Like Prince, Bogdanovich hit his peak at the beginning of his career — naturally, keeping early acclaim is not an easy task. One can hardly fault him for being a quintessential '70s director: he has given us some of the best movies ever made. It's impossible to mention The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, or What's Up, Doc? in the scope of cinematic history and only get a passing reaction. But let's talk about What's Up, Doc? for a minute (or the rest of the review). It was made between the heaviness of The Last Picture Show and the sardonicism of Paper Moon. Both were filmed in black-and-white, both were sad-funny (or just plain old sad), and both existed in a middle ground between bruising reality and sweeping cinematic fundamentals. What's Up, Doc? is the odd man out: it's filmed in color, is a full-blown comedy, and has nothing to say about culture except for a superiorly meta remark about Love Story (you know, the movie that made Ryan O'Neal a star?). It's a screwball comedy, though, and that's part of the fun. Most thought the genre died around the time 1949's I Was a Male War Bride came out; but no. What's Up, Doc? is too well executed and much too rib- tickling to be passed along as an homage. It's a cleverly conceived addition to an established genre that reigned all the way back to the days when Norma Shearer was still considered to be a big deal (and that was ages ago).This time around, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant are replaced by Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand with gusto; O'Neal is the square, Streisand is the cuckoo bird who wins him and us over with her unrealistic, unintentional humorousness. O'Neal portrays Howard Bannister, a musicologist in town with his overbearing fiancée (Madeline Kahn) to receive a grant offered by Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton); Streisand is Judy Maxwell, a fast-talking, multiple collegiate failing woman who decides that Howard is the man for her, and that Howard, from now on, will be called Steve. Other guests pass through the hotel, including Mrs. Van Hoskins (Mabel Albertson), an aging socialite covered in gleaming jewels, Mr. Smith (Michael Murphy), a potential whistleblower carrying top secret files, Mr. Jones (Phillip Roth), who is following Mr. Smith, a bunch of thieves who hope to steal Mrs. Van Hoskins diamonds, and more. But that's not all. Four of these people are carrying identical bags; four of them lose their bags; and four of them find themselves in the possession of materials that certainly aren't theirs. Farcial tensions ensue.It's difficult to write about comedy, especially comedy like this, because, in the case of drama or other sweeping genres, there is an opportunity to go deep in the analysis, pointing out a metaphor here, an allusion over there. What's Up, Doc? isn't particularly scholarly, nor is it sweeping or deep, but boy is it funny. A film like this takes a cinematic master that has the ability to make such plot complications read seamlessly, and Bogdanovich is the perfect man for the job. He has clearly studied the pulses of films like My Man Godfrey and Midnight, and emulates them without a single flaw. It's short — a quick 93 minutes — and not one moment goes by without a smile, a laugh, or something like that. The dialogue gets the tone of His Girl Friday just right, and O'Neal and Streisand are just as good as Grant and Hepburn were in Bringing Up Baby. (Streisand has never been better.)And there's that car chase. That car chase. I can't give away too much, but I will reveal that obstacles include a glass wall, a street blocking ladder, a costume shop, a Chinatown parade, drying cement, a wedding, and even San Francisco Bay. Things that wouldn't be obstacles in real life but are here, somehow easy to accept. How the characters run into them I cannot say, but the way Bogdanovich executes the scene is effortless. Its comedic panache is almost erotic. Like I said earlier, though, comedies are hard to write about. So I'll put it shortly and sweetly: What's Up, Doc? is one of the best, and one of the smartest, and missing out on its pleasures may as well be a federal offense. So get moving, buster.
GeneralUrsus
One of the funniest comic romps to ever hit the silver screen. Ryan O'Neal is perfect as Howard Bannister; a bumbling musicologist who cannot seem to elude the precocious, disaster prone clutches of Barbara Streisand's Judy Maxwell.Streisand really sparkles here and is a riotous foil to O'Neal. Madeline Kahn, in her feature debut, is flat out hysterical as Howard's overbearing fiancée Eunice. This is a classic, screwball farce where four mixed up plaid bags are the ingredients to side-splitting mayhem.Director Peter Bogdanovich does an excellent job of serving up an array of perfectly timed comic set pieces which his troupe of seasoned character actors and stars deliver with lunatic aplomb. There are non- stop bits, one liners, a hilarious hotel hallway scene with slamming doors, zany slapstick fights and a comic crescendo which features the most masterful and madcap chase sequence up, over and around the hills, steps and streets of San Francisco.This is a tremendously funny film that will keep you giggling continuously whether it is your first viewing or your twenty-first.
