The past gets forgotten. Films get forgotten. That’s the way of the world. Even great films that were hits back in their day fall through the cracks. One such is What’s Up, Doc? which premiered at Radio City Music Hall on this date in 1972.
What’s Up, Doc? was inspired lunacy. It was a screwball comedy in the great tradition of screwball comedies. The film is basically Bringing Up Baby crossed with Looney Tunes, with Ryan O’Neal playing the Cary Grant role, Barbra Streisand as his manic Katharine Hepburnesque foil and Madeline Kahn, in her film début, stealing the show as O’Neal’s prim and proper fiancée Eunice.
Watching What’s Up, Doc? does feel like watching a film that got away from Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Streisand’s Judy Maxwell seems such a kindred spirit to Addicted to Love‘s Maggie, it’s just a shame the stars of Joe Versus the Volcano never got to make their own version of Bringing up Baby way back then.
How about the same film with Michelle Pfeiffer cast as Hanks’ controlling fiancé, and Meg as the screwball temptress who may well come between them. Michelle had the dry-humoured poise, Maggie the dizzy energy; together they would have been unstoppable. A true collision of cinematic matter and anti-matter.
