Review of What's Up, Doc? (1972) by Edith N — 05 Sep 2008

I have, yes, noticed that I give a lot of things an eight. There's a reason for that, and it has a lot to do with my OCD tendencies. Let us take [i]What's Up, Doc?[/i] as a specific case. I find it enjoyable despite my deep-seated loathing of Ryan O'Neal. The chase scene is very well done. In short, it's a pretty decent movie in a lot of ways, so I don't want to give it a rating in the lower rankings of positive--a seven or even the dreaded six. It's better than that. On the other hand, it's not remotely as good as, say, [i]The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford[/i] or [i]The Bridge[/i]. It's not even in the same league. While it's quite good at being a lighthearted neoscrewball comedy, it's simply not a great movie. So it gets an eight.

Barbra Streisand is Judy Maxwell, a clever young woman around whom things happen. They don't happen [i]to her[/i]. That's the important thing. She wanders through the whole movie being poised, informed, and attractive (whether you like Barbra Streisand or not, it is a fact that people in the movie find her attractive), and all around her, there is chaos. And generally, she doesn't cause it. In this particular case, there are four identical suitcases, one filled with Mrs. Van Hoskin's (Mabel Albertson's) jewels, one filled with government secrets, one filled with Judy's clothes, and one filled with Dr. Howard Bannister's (O'Neal's) igneous rocks that he believes prove his theory that Neandertals made music out of them. (It is never really explained how he figured this out.) Dr. Bannister is one of the contestants for Frederick Larrabee's (Austin Pendleton's) musical grant. The other contestant, Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars), is out to knock him out of the running by any means necessary.

This culminates in what is probably the scene that boosts this above a seven--a car chase through the streets of San Francisco which involves a delivery bike (which should be motorized if it's going to work in San Francisco!), a taxi, a stolen VW, the obligatory pane of glass, and so forth. All four bags have come into play by this point after being switched around over and over in the hotel earlier. Also by this point, Howard's fiance Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn in her film debut), who had been impersonated by Judy earlier, and Frederick Larrabee have been kidnapped by . . . I think the jewel thieves. It's hard to keep track, really, and one is almost unsure that one wants to. Almost better--and certainly easier!--to go along for the ride.

I know a lot of people are not exactly Streisand fans, just as I am not a Ryan O'Neal fan. But she hardly ever sings here, and she plays her character as if very little matters. Yes, she's probably the smartest, most capable person in the film, but this isn't difficult, and she is pretty much playing the Katherine Hepburn role from [i]Bringing Up Baby[/i] anyway, in that Howard is very bright but very focused. He cannot survive in the real world and must be shepherded through it. At first, this role is filled by the odious Eunice, but one suspects that it will be more fun for him now that it's Judy instead.

All in all, this is an enjoyable, silly movie. I'll even tell you why I like Ryan O'Neal in it. The thing is, he doesn't have to act, which is good, because he can't. He just has to wander around in a deadpan, and he is generally being ignored by everyone around him anyway. He is caught in the storm around Judy, and he cannot hope to escape. That is, in this film, the only place to be. Howard, however, gives himself over to it pretty early, letting things just kind of happen. Oh, he tries to get rid of Judy at first, but in the end, he--and we--just kind of let things happen. We're better off that way.