What's Up, Doc? (1972)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Peter Bogdanovich

Writers:

Peter Bogdanovich (story)
Buck Henry (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

10 March 1972 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Music | Romance

Tagline:

A screwball comedy. Remember them?

Plot:

Two researchers have come to San Francisco to compete for a research grant in Music. One seems a bit distracted...

Plot Keywords:

Jewel | Hotel | Prehistoric | Love | Spy

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 1 win

Cast

Barbra Streisand	...	Judy Maxwell
Ryan O'Neal	...	Dr. Howard Bannister
Madeline Kahn	...	Eunice Burns
Kenneth Mars	...	Hugh Simon
Austin Pendleton	...	Frederick Larrabee
Michael Murphy	...	Mr. Smith
Philip Roth	...	Mr. Jones (as Phil Roth)
Sorrell Booke	...	Harry
Stefan Gierasch	...	Fritz
Mabel Albertson	...	Mrs. Van Hoskins
Liam Dunn	...	Judge Maxwell
John Hillerman	...	Mr. Kaltenborn
George Morfogen	...	Rudy, the Headwaiter
Graham Jarvis	...	Bailiff
Randy Quaid	...	Professor Hosquith

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M (DVD rating) | Finland:S | Norway:12 | Sweden:Btl | USA:G | West Germany:12 | Australia:G | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

22nd Avenue & Balboa Street, San Francisco, California, USA

Company:

Saticoy Productions

Trivia:

This film was morphed from the screen adaptation of Herman Raucher's novel, "A Glimpse of Tiger." Elliott Gould, its star, walked off the set and the project eventually came into the hands of Peter Bogdanovich, who in conceiving a remake of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938) switched genders of the lead couple, making the wild, unpredictable Gould character a female, who would be played by, coincidentally, his ex-wife Barbra Streisand.

Goofs:

Continuity: When they are traveling inside the Chinese dragon and the camera zooms in on their faces, both of Howard's hands are visible holding the horizontal bar inside the dragon's head, but in the wide angle views, both before and after, one of his hands is on the base of the vertical pole holding the dragon head up from the bicycle.

Quotes:

[Howard walks into the hotel gift shop, wanders around, picks up a big rock, a souvenir of Alcatraz, and starts tapping it with a tuning fork]
Judy: What's up, Doc?
Howard: I beg your pardon?
Judy: We gotta stop meeting like this.
Howard: I think you've made a mistake. You see, I only came in here for something for a headache.
Judy: You're gonna need an awful big glass of water to get that down.
Howard: What? No, you see I was just testing this specimen for inherent tonal qualities. I have this theory about early man's musical relationship to igneous rock formations. But I guess you're not interested in igneous rock formations.
Judy: Not as much as I am in the sedimentary or metamorphic rock categories. I mean, I can take your igneous rocks or leave 'em. I relate primarily to micas, quartz, feldspar. You can keep your Pyroxenes, magnetites and coarse grained plutonics as far as I'm concerned.
Howard: I forgot why I came in here.
Judy: Headache.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Evil Come Evil Go (1972)

Soundtrack:

You're the Top

This film IS funny!

A friend of mine recently recommended this film to me. I am not a big Barbra Streisand fan so it took me about 20 minutes to get into this film. Once I was in, I was hooked! So rarely do I laugh out loud at comedies from this time period. I especially liked the hotel detective using his "charm" to delay Mrs. Van Hoskins. Kenneth Mars and Liam Dunn were hilarious, too. If physical comedy is not your bag, you may not like What's Up, Doc? But this is definitely one of my favorite comedies...even better than the old comedies to which it is supposed to be an homage. I'm glad someone listed many of the funny quotes from the film in Message Boards. I want to buy this DVD!