What's Up Doc (1972)

What happens when you cross the characters in Bringing Up Baby (1938) and the wackiness and chase scenes from It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)?

You get Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in the 1972 farce What's Up Doc?

What was once old is made new again in this funny and familiar slapstick comedy about four identical plaid travel cases, the four people that own them and the various people trying to steal them. Put them all up in the same floor of a hotel room amidst a busy musical conference and you've got the ingredients for a humorous, fast-paced farce.

Let's compare Baby, Doc and World...

Grant and Hepburn

In the classic Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, Cary Grant plays Dr. David Huxley, a bumbling paleontologist trying to receive grant money from a foundation created by a wealthy woman named Elizabeth Random. The straight-laced Huxley is engaged to the even more straight-laced and picky Alice Swallow. While trying to impress Ms. Random, Huxley encounters her niece, the fiery, fun and catastrophe-inducing Susan Vance, played by Katherine Hepburn, who tears his tuxedo coat upon first meeting him. The rest of his life descends into a maelstrom of one unfortunate event after another, unable to shake Ms. Vance from his life. Throw in two leopards, one tame, one wild, a missing dinosaur bone and a night in prison and you get the jist of Baby.

Streisand and O'Neal

In What's Up Doc?, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, Ryan O'Neal plays Dr. Howard Bannister, a bumbling musicologist trying to receive grant money from a foundation created by a wealthy man named Frederick Larrabee. The straight-laced Bannister is engaged to the even more straight-laced and picky Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn). While trying to impress Mr. Larrabee, Bannister encounters the fiery, fun and catastrophe-inducing Judy Maxwell, played by Barbara Streisand, who tears his coat jacket upon first meeting him. The rest of his life descends into a maelstrom of one unfortunate event after another, unable to shake Ms. Maxwell from his life. Throw in jewels, top-secret files, thugs, musical rocks, a hotel fire and a night in court and you get the jist of Doc.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

In It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, a large group of characters engage in a high-speed car chase, careening and swerving through crowded city streets, wreaking havoc on by-standers in an attempt to acquire the contents of a buried briefcase of cash.

What's Up Doc?

In What's Up Doc?, a large group of characters engage in a high-speed car chase, careening and swerving through crowded city streets, in an attempt to acquire the contents of the four travel cases.


As mentioned before, at the end of Bringing Up Baby, the group of characters end up in prison while at the end of What's Up Doc?, the group of characters end up in court.


In Baby, Grant succumbs to Hepburn's charm and they fall madly in love. In Doc, O'Neal succumbs to Streisand's charm and they fall madly in love.

Even though What's Up Doc? is not overly original, it is still very funny. Streisand's beauty and charm combined with O'Neal's hapless handsomeness, along with Kahn's hilarious take as the overly watchful fiancé make this film a great joy to watch.

It just goes to show you that, in filmdom, originality isn't as important as execution.