La chica terremoto

What's Up Doc is one of six movies I use to offset ANY bad mood. I have seen it countless times and still can't keep the suitcases straight.

This film is full of visual humor and one liners; Madeline Kahn screaming and taking on all comers while dragging the doorkeeper across the ballroom floor; the hotel crook using his "charm" to drop Mrs. Van Hoskins in her tracks; Eunice hiding in the bathroom because snakes "live in deathly fear of tile"; the promise of Howard conducting an avalanche in A Flat.

My only regret about this movie is that it began endless failed efforts by television and movie makers to replicate the chase through San Francisco. No one has. That sequence is the best example of humor, timing, backdrop, and action, of the chase genre. It has never been equalled by either serious or comedic directors.

Little mentioned in these reviews are Kenneth Mars and Austin Pendelton, two fantastic character actors who are the emeralds surrounding the diamonds of Streisand and O'Neal in the glorious setting of this jewel.

Thank goodness no one in What's Up Doc knows the meaning of the word "propriety!".

After his very successful and critically acclaimed The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich sought to revive the screwball comedies of the 30s. Aiding and abetting him in the revival are Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in What's Up Doc?

Babs and Ryan are in roles that were played by Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant 4 decades ago. The resemblance to Bringing Up Baby is unmistakable. You might also recognize the characters Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss played in Man's Favorite Sport. That both those films were directed by Howard Hawks is also unmistakable. Bogdanovich had also directed a documentary tribute to Hawks.

O'Neal is a musicologist who is looking for a grant to develop a theory about how early cavemen made the first music using igneous rocks that have a tonal quality. I was picturing those Cro-Magnon jam sessions myself, but in a funny way it actually sounds plausible. Anyway he's got some rocks that give out tones and he's traveling with them to demonstrate.

Unfortunately three other people are traveling with the same exact traveling bags, one of them carrying Mabel Albertson's jewels and another carrying some top secret plans. They all stay at the same San Francisco hotel and that's half the comedy. The other half is Barbra trying to 'help' O'Neal out of and into all kinds of situations.

Funniest scenes are O'Neal and Streisand after setting fire to his room and O'Neal dealing with hotel manager John Hillerman. Later on a goofy chase scene through half of San Francisco ending up in the bay and then having to tell it to the judge.

Madeline Kahn who got named in the credits as being 'introduced' plays O'Neal's uptight fiancé. She and Kenneth Mars as O'Neal's rival for the grant stand out among the supporting players.

What's Up Doc? holds up very well, as well as the two Hawks films it is a homage to. Howard Hawks was no doubt pleased.

This film really does make the equivalent Carry On movies extremely juvenile. Very rarely, if at all does this film delve into lavatorial/innuendo humour. All of its humour is based on slapstick and a terrific script full of one-liners that you never tire of viewing. They could have made a sequel, but then the humour would have soured in the same way that the Naked Gun or Airplane films did. All the characterisations are spot on, everyone except Striesand is portrayed as being bumbling unsubtle fools including the CIA and Russian spys. It's basically a change to see the Americans not taking themselves seriously for once. Kenneth Mars is very amusing as O'Neal's opponent for the music grant. Of particular note is the car chase in San Francisco in an exaggerated Bullitt style. Granted, it is very dated - it's 1972 and chequered flares and velvet is much in evidence, but this adds to the film's charm. It is one of the few films that I was sad to see ending...

Great 70s comedy stars Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in a remake of the classic BRINGING UP BABY with bits of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT and CASABLANCA thrown in. Fun all the way in this updated story that has O'Neal playing a doofus professor up for a grant and Streisand as the madcap college dropout who plagues him. Madeline Kahn is hilarious as Eunice Burns.

A great team---and backed by Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton, Michael Murphy, Sorrell Booke, Mabel Albertson, Graham Jarvis, John Hillerman, Randy Quaid, and especially Liam Dunn as the judge, in one of the best comedy performances ever. Great chase scenes thru San Francisco. The court room scene is hilarious.

Others in the cast include Garahm Jarvis, M. Emmet Walsh, Eleanor Zee, Philip Roth, Stefan Gierasch, Stan Ross, and Kevin O'Neal.

Streisand sings "You're the Top" over the opening credits and "As Time Goes By" from atop a piano. Funny film has perfect timing all the way, thanks to direction from Peter Bogdanovich. A must see.

Barbra Streisand disliked the script, didn't want to make the film, and even gave press interviews predicting WHAT'S UP DOC? would be a major flop. Instead it became one of her most fondly remembered performances, a film in which she plays a disaster-prone college student who somehow manages to run afoul of everything from jewel thieves to secret agents.

The film is director Peter Bogdanovic's homage to the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, and like most films of that genre the plot largely defies description. Professor Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) and his fiancée Eunice (Madeline Kahn) are attending a San Francisco convention at which Howard hopes to receive a major grant--but when college student Judy Maxwell (Streisand) bumps into him she is immediately smitten, and her outrageous efforts to insert herself into his life results in car crashes, dining disasters, and a close encounter with a Chinese dragon.

The cast is absolutely flawless. Streisand's lunatic sense of comedy has never been better showcased than here, and while Ryan O'Neal is something of a flyweight talent he nails his role with tremendous charm. Then there is the supporting cast, which reads like a who's who of early 1970s comedy: Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton, Sorrell Brooke, Mabel Albertson (best recalled as Mrs. Stevens in the classic television series Bewitched), and Liam Dunn, to name but a few. And then there is the wonderful Madeline Kahn.

Kahn kicked around New York in various venues in the late 1960s and early 1970s, making one or two television appearances and at least one short film--but WHAT'S UP DOC? was her big screen debut, and boy was it a lulu. Eunice Burns is "that brave, unbalanced woman," and she screams, snarls, whimpers, faints, demands, mutters to herself, is kidnapped, fires off handguns, and suffers every indignity imaginable, and Kahn is so brilliant she steals every scene she's in. It was not only her debut, it was a break-out performance in every sense of the word, and it launched her to equally memorable roles in PAPER MOON, BLAZING SADDLES, and THE YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Sadly, Hollywood seldom made full use of Kahn's talents in later years--but to our good fortune these great performances remain to charm and beguile us.

Based on Bogdanovic's original story, the script is a memorable one, combining the rapier-wit of screwball comedy dialogue with the outrageous situations the genre demands, and if you can get through this one without screaming laughter you might want to have some one check your pulse, because you're probably dead. A sure-fire way to cure the blues! GFT, Amazon Reviewer