Bringing up Baby (1938)

Directed by Howard Hawks. Starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charles Ruggles, May Robson, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, Fritz Field, George Irving, Virginia Walker, Leona Roberts.

Arguably the quintessential screwball comedy (the funniest, at least) with Grant as a sensible but distrait paleontologist hoping to get a major donation from Robson for his museum, but finds his efforts inadvertently stymied by daffy scatterbrain Hepburn; disaster ensues, involving cases of mistaken identity, a missing dinosaur bone, a lively terrier (played by Skippy of The Thin Man and The Awful Truth fame), and a leopard called Baby. Vigorous, fast-paced farce sometimes goes wanting for a “straight man” in the main cast, but the script is constructed so well and the comedic timing is so close to perfect that it’s hard to complain. Performers do splendid work; it’s a shame that Hepburn so rarely played in this go-for-broke “low comedy” arena. A box office flop when first released, but its reputation grew substantially as time went on.

89/100