Welcome to Queerty’s latest entry in our series, Queerantined: Daily Dose. Every weekday as long as the COVID-19 pandemic has us under quarantine, we’ll release a suggested bit of gloriously queer entertainment designed to keep you from getting stir crazy in the house. Each weekend, we will also suggest a binge-able title to keep you extra engaged.
The Screwball: What’s Up Doc?
Barbra Streisand thought for sure What’s Up Doc? couldn’t work as a film, reportedly hated her dialogue and complained to the crew that the movie would be terrible. How wrong she was. Movies seldom get funnier than What’s Up Doc?, and Streisand gave one of her best performances in the film. That says something.
Director Peter Bogdanovich, a man at the apex of his career, saw the comic potential Streisand had as an actress, and formulated this vehicle in the style of Classic Hollywood comedies like Bringing Up Baby. The plot concerns a grifter (played by Streisand) crossing paths with a clutzy scientist (Ryan O’Neal), a wealthy socialite and an undercover government agent at a swanky San Francisco hotel. O’Neal’s scientist falls for Streisand’s grifter right away, and hijinks ensure as mistaken identity, gunfights, courtroom battles and all kinds of slapstick comedy consume the protagonists.
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Colorful, whimsical and very funny, What’s Up Doc? is Hollywood comedy at its best. With a cast that also includes Randy Quaid, Emmet Walsh and the great Madeline Kahn, movies comedy rarely gets this classy, or this funny.
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ScottOnEarth
Great review of an incredible, perfect movie. Your comments here: “Movies seldom get funnier than What’s Up Doc?, and Streisand gave one of her best performances in the film” sum it up succinctly. This movie is pure hilarity and genius at every turn. I never get tired of watching it. It’s also worth mentioning how incredibly beautiful Barbra was in this film, particularly during the piano scene. Again, great review.
Kangol2
This is one of the funniest movies of the 1970s. Barbara Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn, and everyone else in it are hilarious. They don’t make comedies like this any more, so if you get an opportunity to catch it, please do. Decades later it’s still a laugh riot!
trsxyz
I absolutely love this movie! And it holds-up extremely well. Streisand was great, and Madeline Kahn was delicious (I miss her…)!!
GregoryH
I absolutely LOVE this movie. I absolutely LOVED Madeline Kahn, who was taken from us far too young. I don’t know how many time’s I’ve seen “What’s Up Doc?,” but one time was at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Ah, the good old days… 🙂
aL2000
Gregory,
Let me make sure I understood your message correctly: are you ABSOLUTELY certain you love this movie ? I am just ribbing you; I ABSOLUTELY love your enthusiasm !
Joshooeerr
Yes indeed. Back when Bogdanovich was inspired, Streisand was funny, O’Neal was sexy and they still made movies like this. There isn’t a Hollywood comedy from the past twenty, maybe even thirty years that comes anywhere near this funny. And there isn’t an actress today who can deliver the kind of deft, dazzling performance we get from both Streisand and Madeleine Kahn in What’s Up Doc?
eeebee333
As a teen in the 1970s, I worked as an usher at a movie theatre where this played. I saw it many times and never got tired of it. I watched again maybe 5 years ago and still laughed out loud. If there is one weak link, it’s Ryan O’Neal who didn’t have the comic chops of the rest of the cast. But, he looked good and didn’t put a damper on the proceedings.
Kangol2
True about O’Neal, but he more than makes up for it in Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon, which includes one of the best child performances ever, by his daughter Tatum O’Neal. That film also includes Madeline Kahn in a brief appearance as Miss Trixie Delight, along with PJ Johnson as her assistant, that is so uproariously funny it might make you fall off the couch with laughter!
Shadowader43072
Ryan O’Neal looked REALLY GOOD. Super-sexy in those black, horn-rimmed glasses, too. Dictionary definition of “hunk, 70s-style.” The kidz today truly have NO IDEA what they missed out on vis-a-vis men in the 1970s. Yes, for the most part, the CLOTHING was ghastly, but clothes DO come OFF.
MacAdvisor
Just a bit of trivia. The hotel they stay at with the unfinished top floor piano bar is the Hilton San Francisco Financial District at 750 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA 94108. It stands on the location of the building where Chief Robert Ironside had his office.
Paton41
Oh come now, everybody knows we gay men of my generation loves Barbra Jean. My mother knew I was gay at an early age because I adored a la Streisand. My heart will be broken when she is gone. I’ll listen to “Cry Me a River” and cry!
Joshooeerr
Barbra Joan
dhmonarch89
GREAT Movie- and not one cuss word- see, films can be funny without four letters words every other minute. Totally holds up and Ryan O’Neal was NEVER hotter! Madeline Kahn was SO Wonderful!
Shadowader43072
“HOWARD! HOWARD BANISTER!”
“Yes, Eunice.”
“Eunice? There’s a person named ‘Eunice’?”
“Steve, you didn’t tell me you were married.”
“WHY DOES SHE KEEP CALLING YOU THAT NAME?”
“What kind of wine are you serving a table 1?”
“You know. Vocal reverberation under spinal pressure? VRUSP?”
(Oh, yes. I think I read a monograph on that.)
“Who is that dangerously unbalanced woman?”
“HOWARD! Tell them who I am!”
(I never saw her before in my life.)
“Steve, you don’t want to marry Eunice.”
(Quit calling me that. My name’s not ‘Steve.’ It’s ‘Howard.’)
“Neither of you wants to marry Eunice.”
Cam
This movie is hilarious.
ridgelineranger
If I need a good laugh, I slip this into the DVD player…..Love this movie. Also, I have heard this was Madeline Kahn’s first movie role.
phillycap
It so happens, Mr. Simon, that Howard has had discussions with Leonard Bernstein about the possibility of conducting an avalanche … in E flat. Classic. I am not repeating myself! I am not repeating myself! Oh, god. I’m repeating myself. It’s a very screwball old fashioned whacky movie.