A semi-homage to the classic Howard Hawks comedy BRINGING UP BABY with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, WHAT’S UP DOC? is very much a stand-out film on it’s own.
Four plaid suitcases are the focus of the film. One contains important spy papers, another contains the priceless jewellery collection of an ageing lady, another contains rocks and the fourth is simply all that Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand) owns as she thinks nothing of causing grief and mayhem in San Francisco.
Her quarry is Dr. Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal) aspiring musicologist who is attempting to prove the theory that prehistoric man had a penchant for great music making in igneous rock collections. He is in town with overbearing fiancée Eunice Burns (Madeleine Khan) and up against Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars) for a grant from Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton, SHORT CIRCUIT) .
It isn’t long, right from their first meeting in a drugstore that things are going to get interesting and all four owners of the plaid suitcases are convening in a hotel where the musicologist convention Howard is attending is taking place. Some are out for the jewels, whilst one is out for the papers.
Inevitably there is a mix-up and Howard and Judy become part of the enforced confusion, whilst his relationship with Eunice battles to remain true….
WHAT’S UP DOC? contains two great performances from O’Neal and Streisand, who has never been funnier than she was in this (the pair teamed up in 1979 for THE MAIN EVENT) and coupled with a frenzied climax through the streets of San Francisco and a belly-achingly funny court-room scene to top it all off, it retains its’ energy throughout.