Review of Bringing Up Baby (88)

With Netflix, you can now watch several thousands of movies directly from the Internet instead of waiting a day or two to receive a DVD in the mail. This works surprisingly well with a laptop and a few cables to hook it up to a TV and home stereo system. Bringing Up Baby was available for instant online viewing and it won’t be the last one from the list that we will have a chance to watch this way.

Plot
David Huxley is waiting to get a bone he needs for his museum collection. Through a series of strange circumstances, he meets Susan Vance, and the two have a series of misadventures which include a leopard called Baby.

Jason's Thoughts
Prior to watching Bringing Up Baby, I had read that it was a bust at the box office when it was released in 1938. Since that time, the movie has gone on to gain great praise and critical acclaim from movie fans and critics alike. Upon watching it for the first time, I must say that I fall into the traditional way of thinking. Bringing Up Baby wasn't my style of comedy and I can see why it was a box office failure.

I found it ironic that this movie used a similar plot device that Swing Time used just a couple of years earlier, where the man finds a new girl for him on the eve of his wedding day. Of course, the two movies are of different genres with one being a musical and the other being a comedy, but Swing Time worked well with the story where as Bringing Up Baby didn't. I don't think it even really succeeded in the comedy part either, unless you consider people shouting incoherently at each other a form of comedy.

I will admit, a few parts did make me chuckle a bit, but overall I found myself growing more irritated as the movie progressed, mainly due to all of the actors constantly shouting over each others lines. For those that can find the humor in this movie, more power to you, but this must be one of the styles of comedy that I will never enjoy, much like British humor... or is that humour?

Crystal's Thoughts
We were on a roll, well, at least I was, but this came pretty close to striking out. My first thought was is this as scandalous as Hollywood dared to be back in the 30’s? Here is a man, supposedly in love and engaged to be married, but decides to just suddenly fall in love with someone else on his wedding day.

For probably the first half, I was confused a lot as to why this man wasn't marrying that woman. Granted, I should have known since we met her for about three minutes at the beginning of the movie and thought she was merely his secretary. And then the woman he just has to be wrapped up with is, in my opinion, crazy. Ironically, he's the one who is introduced later as the crazy one.

I promise you, I tried to keep an open mind throughout the movie. Luckily, it did keep my interest for the most part, but as it progressed, I too became more and more annoyed with characters. There were entire sections of the script that were missed since everyone was yelling all at once. I remember thinking during the jail scene that I just wanted it to stop. And almost stopped the laptop the movie was playing from on our TV. Overall, it’s not a horrible movie, but why its on the list of the top 100, I'll once again never know. Much like I'll never know why David choose Susan in the end.

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