It’s a funny thing, how time changes your perspective on things. In my last review, for Richie Rich, I talked about how I enjoyed that movie thoroughly as a ten-year-old, but see it now as a totally bland affair. While age may make some things we thought were great turn into crap, age can also make us appreciate the finer things cinema has to offer us. The history of film is rife with examples of movies that were shunned upon released only to gather a following long after it had died in the cineplexes. Blade Runner and The Thing both bombed massively—critically and financially--in the early 80s; now, you’ll be hard pressed to find a fan of the genre not cite those two in their top 10 greatest list. A lover of classic film will invariably bring up the example of Duck Soup—easily the Marx Bros. at their finest, in a comedy that only grows in its relevance with each passing decade, yet it almost ruined the Brother’s movie careers, motivated Zeppo to leave the group and was regarded as a huge mistake.

One crowning example to the theory that not all bad movies will remain bad is Bringing Up Baby. Released in 1938 by Warner Bros. and starring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Cary Grant and Kathrine Hepburn, the movie fell flat on its face and almost got Hepburn placed on the “do not return call” list for good. It’s strange to think of this film getting the ire of the viewing publics as well as the critics, when any time you see a list for the funniest films of all time you’ll see its name somewhere in the top tier. It might’ve been simple timing—screwball comedies were all the rage in the mid to late thirties, and it’s very much possible that Baby just got lost in the fray, a lost gem in a sea of mimics and copycats, just waiting for a generation to uncover it and appreciate it for its true unhinged beauty. One could even be so bold as to say it was a diamond in the rough (the 7-year-old in me has been waiting for years to get a chance to use term that for real).

Well, a comedy classic it was and a classic it remains to this day. Warner Bros. has seen fit to release a brand spanking new edition of Bringing Up Baby, complete with a second disc of goodies to sic your large cat fangs into. Let's see how the Brothers Warner did on one of their most valued treasures, shall we?

The Film

Professor David Huxley (Cary Grant) is the ultimate geek. Smart and almost all-knowing in his field of study, he's regarded as one of the top minds of paleontology. He's coming remarkably close to finishing his prized work, a complete and intact skeleton of a brontosarus (it's 1938--they don't know that brontos are actually brachiasauraus with the wrong head.) He's missing just one more bone, which is due to arrive any day now. With the skeleton complete and on display in the museum, David is hoping that it will attract enough attention for the museum to win the favor of Mr. Peabody, a lawyer who represents a woman named Elizabeth Random. Ms. Random is wealthy and is looking to make a donation of one million dollars to whomever she deems the most worthy. To help set things in motion, David sets up a golfing date with Mr. Peabody. Knowing that what he says during this meeting could very well decide the fate of that million dollars, David begins to fret.

Then he remembers that he's getting married in twenty-four hours.

See, in addition to being smart and in love with his work, David's also a bit absent-minded, particularly when it comes to dealing with any kind of social contact where the conversation strays outside dinosaurs, and especially when he's talking to women. His bride to be, Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) is a bit of an ice queen, keeping David focused entirely on his work while she plans the wedding. As she's also his assistant in the museum, she knows how important the grant is and refutes David's suggestion that they take a honeymoon after they're married. David knows, like most men of common sense, that the honeymoon is the one time during marriage that you're garunteed sex, so the denial of that garuntee puts him into an even bigger angst.

The whirlwind of a plot is set in motion when David goes to keep his goling date with Mr. Peabody. During a round, David knocks his golfball astray, right into the green of the hole in front of them. Unfortunatly for him, right when he relocates his ball it's picked up by Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn), who mistakes it for her ball and proceeds to play it right on through, despite David standing two feet away from her telling her it's not her ball. After finishing her round, she steals David's car and wrecks the fender--again, all with David standing right there telling her to stop (even climbing on top of the car when he's at first unsuccessful). Oblivious, she drives off, taking David with her (and away from Mr. Peabody).

Susan is viewed by some people as a bit of a plotting, air-headed brat, always causing people to get into trouble then never taking the fall for it. While she certainly isn't all there in the head, I'm not sure if she's a brat. She's more of a classic example of the screwball heroine--scatterbrained and frantic. She ignores most of what David says because most of the time he's complaining about how miserable he is (or how miserable she's making him). This doesn't register for her because she's all about living for the moment, even if sometimes she takes steps to make the moment happen. In the hands of Hepburn, Susan is a whirlwind of energy, a chatterbox who speaks to fast and unrelentingly that it's as though someone inserted a thesarus into the speaking patterns of a three-year-old girl who's had too much sugar and is up past her bedtime.