"WHAT'S UP DOC?"........THE TECHNICOLORED SCREWBALL COMEDY......

"What's Up, Doc?" (1972)  Always fun to come back to this one.........even when it strains so hard, you fear it'll give the actors strokes.......

                 For a couple of years in the early 70's , director-writer Peter Bogdonovich reigned supreme as a skilled refurbisher of beloved old Hollywood genres.......(you could think of him as a sort of pre-cursor to Quentin Tarantino...... a movie-buff director who poured his love of cinema lore back into his own films.)

                 "What's Up Doc?" was his studied, but brisk and exuberant imitation of Howard Hawks' 1938 'screwball' comedy 'Bringing Up Baby" with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.

                   The 'screwball' designation of this genre meant that it usually involved a stuffy, reserved guy who finds his life turned upside down by a an adorable but maddeningly manic girl.  Chases, comedic misunderstanding and chaos ensue.

                    Somehow, a modernized version with Ryan O' Neal and Barbra Streisand replicating Grant and Hepburn........worked.

                    The stars tore into the rat-a-tat, back-and-forth dialogue with exceptional skill and Bogdonovich backed them up with a huge, Mel Brooks-worthy roster of supporting actors.

                    The director was smart enough to know how fast a screwball comedy has to move......and finished up his 93 minute romp with a riotous, stunt-filled car chase throughout San Francisco......(this 11 minute chase, by the way, packs in more jokes and thrills than the entire 3 & 1/2 hours of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".)

                     A BQ irony worth noting:  The movie features Kenneth Mars as repulsive, preening, Middle European villain 'Hugh Simon".....a devastating takeoff on the notorious acidic critic John Simon, famous for his toxic reviews that mocked actors' physical appearances without mercy.

                    Incredible to imagine in this day and age, but the real Simon filled his reviews of Barbra Streisand's films with endless, hateful descriptions of her......wait for it.....nose.  (In essence, he's the spawn and ancestor of all our current cyberbullies and Twitter Twits.....including you-know-who...)

                   Therefore it's so fitting that the movie version of Simon in "What's Up, Doc" gets roundly insulted and finally humiliated by none other than the young, sexy and gorgeous Barbra Streisand. Makes us love the movie even more.

                    And some critics resented the film giving Ryan O' Neal the chance to throw a well aimed, climactic zinger at his huge mega-weepy hit "Love Story."

                      Not us. "Love Story" had it comin'.......(and how can anyone resist the ageless visual gag of turning a dashing Hunk into a nerd with only a pair of horn rimmed glasses.......it apparently never gets old with Hollywood - from Cary Grant in 'Bringing Up Baby' to Chris Hemsworth in the remade 'Ghostbusters')

                      4 screwballs (****) for this one........BQ says pick it up whenever you need come cheering up.