What’s Up, Doc? (1972)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) There’s an adorable playfulness at work in writer-director Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? that makes it difficult to resist—and doubly difficult if you’re even casually aware of screwball comedies. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal star: he in a straight-laced role while she plays the anarchic Bugs Bunny figure turning his life into chaos. There are several broad acts to the film, from the first-act hotel farce to a fight sequence, a large-scale chase through San Francisco, an absurdly funny courtroom scene and then the romantic conclusion. It makes What’s Up, Doc? slightly episodic, but the energy and comedy are kept at a high pace throughout. (Then it eviscerates O’Neal’s own turn in Love Story in its final moments, which is always a plus.) While the film explicitly patterns itself on 1930s filmmaking, today’s audiences will see another kind of nostalgia in the film’s generous display of 1970s fashion. It all amounts to something very enjoyable to watch—perhaps not quite completely hilarious from beginning to end, but still a film that’s easy to like. I’m not sure Bogdanovich was ever looser, funnier or more crowd-pleasing than in putting together What’s Up, Doc?