BRINGING UP BABY
by Rob Nelson
reprinted by permision from the City Pages and Rob Nelson

What does one possibly say about his favorite movie? Well, like all works of art that are most deeply and subjectively beloved, it works to fulfill a fantasy: in this case, that a shy, rather antisocial bookworm (Cary Grant, pictured above-left) might find his inner child as a result of being wildly pursued and ultimately netted by the perfect partner (Katharine Hepburn, above-right). I say perfect because Hepburn's Susan is smart, self-confident, energetic, beautiful, charmingly kooky, and unambiguously smitten: spying her manfrom a distance, she proceeds to dent his car, trip him, steal his clothes-anything to keep him near her. For his part, David is annoyingly preoccupied with work (he's trying in vain to complete the skeleton of a brontosaurus), although Susan detects a playful demeanor buried beneath this paleontologist's professional facade.
In order to draw David out, Susan brilliantly lures him into helping bring Baby, her pet leopard, up to Connecticut. Here, with the help of Baby and George (a perpetually yapping terrier, aptly described as "a perfect little fiend"), Susan persuades David to choose her rather than his fiancie, the boring Miss Swallow (May Robson): in other words, to choose a life of crazy, anarchic, subversive adventure over one of staid convention. Along the way, a golf ball, an olive, a couple of swans, a "bad" leopard, and a "rare and precious" bone figure significantly (and metaphorically), although Bringing Up Baby isn't so much a screwball comedy as a love story. And while it fits just fine within the series of impeccable entertainments directed by Howard Hawks (see also: His GirI Friday, The Big Sleep, and Rio Bravo, to name just three), this one seems even richer- a philosophical ray of hope that everytbing's going to be all right.