“You’ve just had a bad day, that’s all.”
“That’s a masterpiece of understatement.”

Often seen as the prototypical screwball comedy, Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby unfolds a hectic plot that continuously compounds its delirious mania until it reaches a fever pitch—then it keeps on going, somehow managing to get funnier even as its madcap shenanigans gets sillier.

Starring Cary Grant as a paleontologist seeking a generous donation for his museum full of dinosaur bones, and Katherine Hepburn as the motor-mouthed heiress of his potential benefactor (May Robson), the film really finds its stride when it introduces the title character, a tame leopard who can be calmed by song, that must be secretly transported to a farm in Connecticut. Throw in an impish dog and we’re all set.

As the farcical, brilliantly scripted story unfolds, and the battle of the sexes heats up, the entire production comes to rest on the shoulders of Hepburn and Grant, whose incredible chemistry and individual arsenals of comedic talents generate an irresistible forward momentum. Hawks is no slouch either, of course, and ensures that there’s no dead weight anywhere at all. The supporting roles (Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, Fritz Feld) each provide a perfectly-tuned complement the central mayhem.

Bringing Up Baby is a pure delight from beginning to end, one of those rare films that’s mostly devoid of any sort of messaging and is just plain funny. Though far from the most inherently hysterical moment in the film, the exchange that tickled both mine and my wife’s funny bones the most was when Hepburn is asked to provide her aunt with the name of her companion, who up to this point has been acting like a complete madman (though his actions make perfect sense to us). He has asked her not to use his real name, because then her aunt would never donate the money. So she must improvise. “It’s, uh, Bone,” she says. “Bones?” her aunt asks. “One bone,” she says with authority. My wife agreed to bend the no-rewind rule not once, but twice.