This is the quintessential screwball comedy and my fourth favorite movie. http://lynnecoll.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-five-favorite-movies.html
A madcap heiress ropes a reluctant paleontologist into helping her transport a tame, music-loving leopard from New York City to Connecticut. What could be screwier than that?
Katharine Hepburn is charming and intoxicating and Cary Grant is at his flustered best. They first meet on the golf course when Susan Vance (Hepburn) plays the ball of David Huxley (Grant) interrupting his important game. Next she takes off in his car. Things just get crazier from there at a nightclub with the olive trick and the ripped dress, a drive around Riverdale. Then the fateful trip to Connecticut: an encounter with a pair of swans, a stolen car, a shifting riverbed, an escaped circus animal, multiple arrests and a memorable interrogation.
Backing Hepburn and Grant is a brilliant supporting cast: May Robson as Aunt Elizabeth, Charles Ruggles as Major Applegate and Walter Catlett as Constable Slocum (among many others.) Don't forget Skippy, the wire haired terrier who played George, "...a perfect little fiend and you know it," as Aunt Elizabeth says. Skippy worked with Grant earlier in The Awful Truth and is best known as Asta, Nick and Nora Charles' dog in The Thin Man Series.
Katharine Hepburn is charming and intoxicating and Cary Grant is at his flustered best. They first meet on the golf course when Susan Vance (Hepburn) plays the ball of David Huxley (Grant) interrupting his important game. Next she takes off in his car. Things just get crazier from there at a nightclub with the olive trick and the ripped dress, a drive around Riverdale. Then the fateful trip to Connecticut: an encounter with a pair of swans, a stolen car, a shifting riverbed, an escaped circus animal, multiple arrests and a memorable interrogation.
Backing Hepburn and Grant is a brilliant supporting cast: May Robson as Aunt Elizabeth, Charles Ruggles as Major Applegate and Walter Catlett as Constable Slocum (among many others.) Don't forget Skippy, the wire haired terrier who played George, "...a perfect little fiend and you know it," as Aunt Elizabeth says. Skippy worked with Grant earlier in The Awful Truth and is best known as Asta, Nick and Nora Charles' dog in The Thin Man Series.
The dialogue is fast and snappy--jokes fly so fast it's easy to miss some. One of my favorites is when Constable Slocum asks why Susan is limping. She says she lost her heel. Slocum says, "Well, forget about him." I'm not giving it justice here--trust me, it's very funny.
The film includes what may be the first modern movie use of the term, gay. When Aunt Elizabeth asks why David is wearing a negligee, he says he just turned gay, all of a sudden (apparently, an ad lib by Grant.)
A great film and a funny movie: see it.
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