Screwball

By and large, I often find that I like old movies more than I like new movies. Old movies took risks, showed flair, and didn't rely on computer generated anything. New movies are formulaic and, as a general rule, the only flair they show is visual and computer generated.

And then we have the old Hollywood tradition of the 'Screwball Comedy'. These are the fast-paced ones where no-one stands still for longer than three seconds, people are talking over each other, and there's often a romantic subplot.

These I tend to avoid - both old and new - because the sense of humour usually relies on one's ability to suspend disbelief to the point where one accepts that such a collection of idiots could ever exist. They aren't representative of the real world, they're not even a caricature of the real world - they're way beyond that level of craziness. The new ones are broadly better than the old ones, simply through better pacing. I can't often watch these movies because I tend not to laugh... either the humour isn't there, or it's the sort of thing I might have found funny as a teenager, but not now.

And yet one of the movies in my birthday present Cary Grant collection was a 'screwball comedy' by the name of Bringing Up Baby. Cary Grant is a guarantee of value and quality, right? And his co-star was Katherine Hepburn, so it should be awesome, right?

How can I put this?

It seems that this is considered "one of the greatest screwball comedies ever made" but, whether it's the fault of the writers (not so much in terms of dialogue, which is occasionally pretty good, just poorly executed, but the plot itself is ridiculously implausible), the director (although Howard Hawks is responsible for some true classics) or, God forbid, the cast (and I don't just mean the two stars - everyone is uniformly terrible), I actually hated this movie, and I rarely hate movies.

Let me set the scene: A zoologist (Grant) is putting together a Bronosaurus skeleton, but one key bone is missing (count the number of times the phrase 'intercostal clavicle' is spoken in the movie). 'Tomorrow', he is set to marry his fiancée, but almost immediately there's an obvious problem: He hints that he wants children, she believes his work is everything and that no domestic entanglements should interfere (quite the turnaround!). They are trying to secure a $1M grant from some rich person, and the zoologist has to play golf with the potential donor to grease the wheels...

...Only that's not the donor, it's a legal representative of the donor and, while on the golf course, the zoologist runs into a woman (Hepburn) who could generously be described as 'eccentric' or, more accurately as 'dangerously insane'. It starts off small: she mistakes his golf ball for hers (and really doesn't see why it should matter if she's playing the wrong ball)... Then she mistakes his car for hers, and drives off with it (something similar happens later on, forcing me to wonder if car theft could possibly have been that easy in those days). She later turns up in the restaurant where the zoologist is due to have dinner with the donor's representative and causes further chaos by mistakenly walking off with another woman's purse, then handing it to the zoologist, causing an arguement to erupt between him, a psychiatrist and his wife...

...And it just gets worse from there. Somewhere along the lines, the missing Brontosaurus bone turns up, then gets buried and lost by a dog. The titular 'Baby' is a very tame leopard, mistakenly received by Hepburn's character when it's intended for her rich aunt (who turns out to be the mysterious potential donor). Then a very aggressive leopard is taken from a nearby circus to be destroyed because it's caused too much trouble... but gets released and then lost by Hepburn's character because she's mistaken it for her leopard. This is that moment when someone normally says "hilarity ensues"...

Essentially, we are expected to believe not only in 'love at first sight' (which I can manage, jaded though I am), but that the pathalogical lying and blatant disregard for others exhibited by the 'eccentric' is somehow made acceptable because she's fallen instantly in love with the bumbling zoologist with whom she's only ever argued... and then that, in spite of everything, he's just daft enough to believe that a couple of nightmarish days, in which it's been implied that he's a stalker, that he's insane, he's been arrested, and generally inconvenienced at every step by this woman, that he'll realise that it's the most fun he's ever had, and that he should ditch his fiancée and take up with the nutter.

It's one of those films where no-one lets anyone else finish a sentence, and I was frequently left begging the characters on screen to, just once, please, listen to what the other person is saying. The whole sequence in the police station was utterly infuriating, with a Police Constable (somehow equivalent to the sheriff, in that he's elected, it seems) who doesn't believe anything anyone tells him unless he hears it over the telephone. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd ended up arresting the entire town for not being who they claimed to be.

The whole thing is a sequence of irrational mistakes, misunderstandings, unbelievable coincidences and outright lies that make virtually no sense. I guess there has to be one duffer in every collection and, with barely a single truly funny scene (there was one line that almost raised a smile, if only through Grant's exasperated delivery) Bringing Up Baby would seem to be the one for this collection.

It's kind of a shame, because my friend had hoped to find a collection that featured something like North By Northwest... and that would have been a worthier addition to this collection than Bringing Up Baby.

Oh well... Time to get on and do something constructive, I guess...