What's Up, Doc? (1972) * * * *

Directed by:  Peter Bogdanovich

Starring:  Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal, Madeline Kahn, Austin Pendleton, Liam Dunn, Kenneth Mars

What's Up Doc? is a high-energy, ludicrous comedy of mistaken identities which is also very funny.    Explaining the plot is an exercise in futility.    A group of characters try explaining it to a harried judge and causes him to take extra doses of Alka Seltzer.    The plot is convoluted, but in a good way.    It is a great excuse to keep the shenanigans going.  

I'll describe the setup and leave the rest to you to discover.     Four different people check into a hotel.   All own the exact same type of suitcase, but each has something different in it.     One has clothes, one has rocks, one has important papers, and one has precious jewels.     There are many people after the suitcases with the papers and the jewels.     The rocks are owned by musicologist Howard Bannister (O'Neal), a very straight-laced, nerdy man trying to win a grant with a theory that rocks were used by primitive people as musical instruments.     The clothes are owned by Judy (Streisand), who falls in love with Howard at first sight and attempts to win him over.    How?  By posing as his fiancee Eunice Burns (Kahn) at an important function.   Howard's relationship with Eunice lacks any kind of passion and is borderline platonic.   He knocks on her door saying, "This is Howard Bannister, your fiance."     Judy is a free-spirit who follows her heart and unintentionally wreaks havoc on poor Howard and anyone associated with him.    

What carries all of this along is precise timing and all of the fun everyone has here.     Howard is so polite and unwilling to make a scene that he goes along with Judy's deception.     Maybe he even loves her too.    She is certainly a million miles removed from the tightly-wound, shrill Eunice.       Howard tells Judy, "You're different,"   She replies, "I know, but in the future, I'll try to be the same."   He is no match for her.   Neither is anyone or anything else, it seems.    

What's Up Doc? contains a lot of wit and physical gags mixed together, but it all works because it's funny.    Judy's pursuit of Howard destroys a hotel floor, but it still kept me caring.   You would think trying to keep up with who is tracking whom and why is a fool's errand, but amazingly we can.     In the end, everyone gets who or what they deserve.     Streisand and O'Neal are enormously appealing leads.    She's the irresistible force to O'Neal's immovable object, but each may be what the other has been looking for.     O'Neal even kids the famous line from Love Story.  "Love means never having to say you're sorry," says Judy.    He replies, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."     If you're unable to laugh at that, you're watching the wrong movie.