Pun Salad

Sometimes I get a hankering to see an old fondly-remembered flick, and that's the case here. If you're a screwball comedy fan, this is a great effort, a conscious homage to the classics of the 30's and 40's.

Here's a sobering thought (for me, anyhow): this movie came out in 1972, about 34 years after one of its major inspirations, Bringing Up Baby. And it's now (as I type) 37 years since What's Up, Doc was released.

Anyway: Ryan O'Neal plays the Cary Grant role of Dr. Howard Bannister, a musicologist from Ames, Iowa, in the big city of San Francisco with his shrewish fiancee, Eunice (the wonderful Madeline Kahn). He's in the running for a prestigious grant from the Larrabee Foundation, which involves him carrying around a large plaid travelling bag full of rocks.

Complications: three other identical bags, each with its own valuable content, rendezvous at the hotel where Howard and Eunice are staying. Worse, one of those bags belongs to Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand's finest role), and she falls hard for Howard. (That's inexplicable, but in screwball comedies, that sort of thing happens all the time.) Coincidence piles on happenstance, which are mixed together with puns, slapstick, and sight gags.

Seen today, some flaws appear: the pacing is uneven, some jokes fall flat, and the big chase scene at the end is dated. But I defy you to not laugh at "What are you doing? This is a one way street!" "We're only going one way."