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Created Mar 23, 2012 04:20PM PST • Edited May 10, 2013 11:12PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Screwball romantic-comedies don’t get much better than Bringing Up Baby, “Baby” being a leopard and its adoptive parents a never better Cary Grant & Katherine Hepburn. Three quarters of a century after its premiere, Howard Hawks’ classic remains a delightfully ticklish cinematic confection.

   Grant plays a nerdy paleontologist set to marry an even more nerdy museum director until daffy and entitled heiress Hepburn swoops in, determined to sweep him away. Oh yeah, she’s caring for Baby, a leopard who responds favorably to singing. Don’t ask…

   Hawks is the master of fast talking, overlapping dialogue, the kind of which typifies Golden Age movies. His Bringing Up Baby is an exemplar. The American Film Institute considers it one of the greatest movies and one of the greatest comedies of cinema’s first 100 years.¹ Who can argue. Well, Katherine Hepburn’s Susan Vance probably would, because she argues everything, but that kind of proves the point.

   ¹ Wikipedia

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Cary Grant in Clark Kent glasses & Katherine Hepburn in stunningly glamorous outfits are a sight to see. More impressive is their terrific chemistry together and how well they play essentially ridiculous characters without embarrassing themselves. Perfect moviestardom, this.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Howard Hawks famously defined a “good movie” as “Three great scenes, no bad ones.”

    Bringing Up Baby easily exceeds that standard, marking it as more than good, more than great even.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.2

17. Sex Innocent 1.3

18. Violence Gentle 1.1

19. Rudeness Polite 1.2

21. Reality

    Glib 2.0

    Baby is said to be from Brazil, which would make him a jaguar, not a leopard.

    Politically, the movie is set during the latter part of the Great Depression, yet focuses with neither jealousy or disdain on what the Left now contemptuously calls the 1%. My how times have changed in Hollywood.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.3

23. Biological Surreal 2.1

24. Physical Glib 1.5