What's Up, Doc? (1972)

I first watched this sometime in the 80's, and after having seen it hundreds of times, it is still so funny. It never occurred to anyone that there might be more than one type of suitcase.

I wish I enjoyed this movie more, as others seem to have found it very funny.But for me, most of it, the scenes in the hotel, were too clearly an attempt to come up with an equivalent of a Feydeau bedroom farce like *The Lady from Maxim's* or *A Flea in her Ear*. The timing was wrong, though, and the lines too forced.Once we got out of the hotel and started driving all over San Francisco, it got funnier for me, but I didn't find it very original. Keystone Cops.Again, I wish I could have found it funnier - I was in a good mood - but it just seemed forced and imitative to me.

Barbara is the cute impish free-spirited daughter of a San Francisco judge: a knowledgeable perennial college dropout or expellee, who is arriving home on a plane. She inexplicably takes a strong interest in an absentminded young musicology professor(Ryan O'Neal) from the Midwest, also arriving on this plane with his nagging fiancé, Eunice, in pursuit of a grant for a very esoteric-sounding project(trying to prove that ancient man's first musical instruments were certain igneous rocks that make a tone when struck). Barbara causes a variety of traffic accidents in her initial pursuit of Ryan. She sees her chance when Ryan leaves Eunice outside to get some aspirin, when she begins her remarkably successful plan to worm her way into Ryan's life, eventually displacing Eunice. She checks into the hotel where Ryan + Eunice check in, along with two other parties who have overnight bags identical to those of Ryan and hers. The 4 bags, containing very different sets of items, get thoroughly mixed up by the incompetent bell boy, thus providing the basis for the remainder of this romantic comedy, in which the two get mixed up in the affairs of the others whose bags they have opened. Of course, after a variety of chases and mishaps , the two eventually become heroes, Eunice leaves Ryan, and Barbara secretly gets on the plane taking Ryan back to his college. It's all very contrived, of course,, but fun for the audience, if not for most of the characters. Liam Dunn, as Barbara's judge father, is a hoot, when the whole gang is brought into his courtroom to try to resolve their complaints about each other. He doesn't survive the experience!Incidentally, there are a few places around the world where rocks do ring when struck, and they are all igneous.If you like this sort of zany contrived screenplay, you might like an old 'made for TV' kung fu-spaghetti western hybrid farce , called "Blood Money", presently available as part of an 8 westerns DVD set. The 4 mixed up bags of the present film brought to mind the 4 sexy butts that were tattooed, in Chinese, each with partial instructions to finding a hidden treasure, in this slightly later film. Two teams(one good, one bad) compete to find the scattered women and find a way to gaining access to their butts.This film also somewhat reminds me of the well regarded Preston Sturges '41 film "Sullivan's Travels", in which Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake meet by chance and go on an unlikely odyssey.

"Watch it!" Streisand spouts during a duet of "You're the Top" when Ryan O'Neal sings "You're the nose..." Of course, she's delighted with his retort of "On the great Durante". That's just one indication of the style of comedy here, a throw-back to "Hellzapoppin'" with its "Airplane!" style like gags and of course the great screwball comedies of the 1930's and 40's. Streisand is at her most gorgeous here, with long flowing blonde hair, and O'Neal gets past his poster-boy good looks by playing a rather nebbish character who has about as much romance here as Slim Pickens."When you go to San Francisco, wear a flower in your hair!", the famous song says, and this is exactly that era, not quite "Tales of the City", yet flowing with memories of one of the most visually exciting cities on the West coast. The plot starts off where all San Francisco movies should start, the airport, and when you get your first glimpse of Streisand, stalking O'Neal for a reason that is never made clear, you are entranced. She makes small talk with him in a drug store, a vision which does not go unnoticed by his obnoxious fiancée (Madeline Kahn in her film debut), and ends up at the same hotel where ironically his briefcase (filled with rocks) looks exactly like the one held by the short-skirted matron (Mabel Albertson) who is carrying her valuable jewelry collection. Albertson, by the time this film is over, will have one of her famous "Bewitched" sick headaches, tripped very hysterically by future "Boss Hogg" Sorrel Booke and at one point falling down on the hotel floor, smacking the carpet in tears when her jewelry case is stolen.Kenneth Mars, who would go onto film immortality by playing the metal-armed police inspector in "Young Frankenstein", plays O'Neal's rival for a business contract to be handed out by the subtly wise-cracking Austin Pendleton, and John Hillerman is the epitome of drollness as the hotel manager who suggests O'Neal leave the hotel room he is occupying. "When?", O'Neal asks. "Yesterday", Hillerman responds, just as bluntly as he would do much later with Tom Selleck on "Magnum P.I.". In between, you've got Kahn throwing tantrums, Streisand smirking and plotting as she poses as O'Neal's fiancée, and finally, an outrageous chase sequence through San Francisco where practically every famous location is shown, spoofing an earlier chase sequence in the very serious "Bullit", and later repeated (but not ripped off) in "Foul Play".Streisand gets to sing a bit of "As Time Goes By" here, in addition to "You're the Top" (over the opening and closing credits), and O'Neal even gets to spoof Ali MacGraw's famous line from "Love Story". Obviously a take-off on the Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant comic masterpiece "Bringing Up Baby", "What's Up Doc?" still holds up freshly on its own, a modern classic even if it has passed the 40 year mark, and a master class in what modern comedy should be without being crude. Director Peter Bogdanavich was hot after "The Last Picture Show" and would remain fresh with "Paper Moon" but unfortunately, that success was short-lived.