Saturday, February 19, 2011

#310: Bringing Up Baby

Directed by: HOWARD HAWKS
1938, TSPDT Rank #94

Bringing Up Baby is widely seen as one of the funniest films ever made. However, not unlike Kind Hearts and Coronets recently, I feel it's a somewhat funny movie, but very overrated in general. This one rates a little higher than Kind Hearts for me because the screenplay is consistently good and doesn't rely on narration at all. The plot is similar to a lot of classic screwball comedies, involving a romance 'accidentally' blossoming while a zany and fast-paced chaos occurs around the characters, who don't realize they are falling in love. The screwball formula had been pretty well established by a number of films by this point in the late 1930s and would be perfected and given a jolt of energy by Preston Sturges in the following decade. But I think this film is so well loved because it is basically a quintessential screwball comedy, played well by popular stars Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (although with not too much chemistry going on), and is very accessible for beginners to classic films. If you haven't seen it yet, I would recommend seeing it before you've seen a lot of other screwball films for maximum effect.

However, for a greater and more hilarious example of the screwball genre, check out my next post, I have just the thing...

(Rating: 7/10)

No comments:

Post a Comment