Friday, March 11, 2011

#88 Bringing Up Baby (1938)

This movie's on the list of AFI's funniest movies of all time, which is deserved. I'll admit that some of the comedy was corny, and at times, Katharine Hepburn's character was pretty obnoxious, but it's amazing to me that a 73-year-old movie can still be so entertaining and hilarious.

It's a story of an awkward, straight-laced paleontologist (called a zoologist back then) named David (Cary Grant) who meets a crazy woman Susan (Katharine Hepburn). In her attempts to spend more time with him and keep him from marrying his boring fiancee, she gets him involved in the wildest situations... some involving her tame leopard named Baby.

This movie did terribly at the box office since '30s crowds didn't appreciate Hepburn's feminism and her strong personality. This movie actually cost the director his job, and Hepburn was forced out of her contract for it.

An interesting line in the movie is when Susan's aunt walks in, sees David wearing Susan's nightgown (since Susan had stolen all of his clothes), and asks him why he's wearing it. He's flustered and yells, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!" I didn't know that "gay" meant that back in the '30s. According to IMDB, my favorite website in the world, it's one of the first times "gay" was used in its modern sense.

Rating: 7.5/10

Big Names: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant

2 comments:

  1. Yes, IMDB has been very helpful for movie blogging:)

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  2. It really is! I have the IMDB app on my phone now. :)

    ReplyDelete