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It's just one of those films. It caught me at the start, made me laugh (a lot), didn't stop for about 100 minutes and left me in a particularly breathless state. In a good way. My advice to anyone is to watch this film, especially if you're in a position where you need a good cheering up. The laughs are so rapid and top-notch that I defy anyone to keep a straight face for more than five minutes when put in front of this screwball madness.And madness is no exaggeration. This film is astonishing – it just leaps from bizarre situation to bizarre situation, never giving in for more than a second. I could go on for days listing my favourite bits – quotes, scenes and that particularly special moment when Cary just went gay all of a sudden! Who can't laugh at Susan's tricks with the olives? Or Major Applegate's frankly odd leopard cry? And "I was born on the side of a hill… I was born on the side of a hill"?!What makes this film work so fantastically well – apart from the brightness of the gags, the eccentricity of the plot and the nuttiness of the characters – is the superb cast. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are (obviously) famously strong actors – and I believe that they are both at their best here. They both convey the complete insanity of the film in just the right fashion, with Katharine Hepburn's Susan being the peak of lunacy. She is so, so funny and so fantastically well-timed in her delivery of the jokes that, without everything else, the film would still be propelled along at breakneck speed by her performance alone. Susan is basically on a completely different planet to everybody else altogether – and Hepburn lives there with her quite comfortably in this film!But although Susan is on another planet – this isn't the only ingredient in the film's recipe for disaster. Seeing as all the other characters are also on their own individual planets, nothing can be done to help! David Huxley's planet is called What's-Happening-To-Me-Today?, and Cary Grant is supreme in this role. He is a man placed in the weirdest situation imaginable and only has his own confusion to work with. Well, that and his charm. It is a role that Cary would repeat again and again in the future, and one that he does exceptionally well here. He is charming, as he always was, but is dragged into Susan's hare-brained existence – becoming a nervous wreck. I cannot emphasise enough how funny it is to watch him at dinner with Susan, Mrs. Carlton-Random and Major Applegate as he repeatedly gets up and walks away mid-conversation in a completely distracted fashion in order to follow George the dog out of the room. He is a man completely confused and utterly frustrated by this screwball that is Susan – who just can't help but drag him in the worst conditions possible. And it's a dream to watch.Mrs. Carlton-Random (May Robson) and Major Horace Applegate (Charles Ruggles) are also superlative and, sure enough, are never quite on Planet Earth. They are constantly being baffled by the insane goings-on around them and are just funny, funny, funny.Incidentally, I watched this film for the first time the day after receiving good exam results and I was on a bit of a high – making it funnier still! It is a film with a remarkable ability to make you happy – no matter how down-in-the-dumps you may feel. Similar films, such as the screwball-comedy-homage What's Up, Doc? are often worthy of a watch, but never surpass the quality of humour present in Bringing Up Baby.10/10
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