alr

What's Up, Doc?

Screening on Film
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
With Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn.
US, 1972, 35mm, color, 94 min.
Print source: HFA

Inspired by Bringing Up Baby, Bogdanovich’s take on the screwball comedy, which pairs Ryan O’Neal as an uptight academic with Barbra Streisand’s dizzy dame, is his most overt homage to a bygone style of filmmaking. It is also one of his most enjoyable to watch, as the hilarious gags – scripted by Buck Henry – fly by at breakneck speed. Nominally concerned with four identical suitcases and the various people trying to steal and/or retrieve them, the plot is really just an excuse to land a befuddled O’Neal, playing against type, and a luminous Streisand in increasingly outrageous situations. In her screen debut, Madeline Kahn is shrill perfection as O’Neal’s rigid, humorless fiancée.

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