Dredging Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby simply isn't a funny movie. it is intolerable, obsessant, and mocking. I honest to God wanted to walk out of the class. I cringed every time Hepburn opened her mouth. I do, however, think that my grandmother would find it funny. That brings me to my point. Humor changes generationally. My grandmother can watch physical comedy and air-headed blondes the the sun don't shine, but finds the magic of George Carlin crude and dry. Sure, these is always a classic form of comedy, but this surely isn't it. I think it is why the movie feels so old, distant and antiquified. It isn't the black and white, or the foreign actors, or even the depression-era Ford. It feels old because we don't laugh when it tries to be funny. We, I believe, mistake foreign for old. I causes an otherwise classic movie to seem distant. Baby is a museum to its form of comedy. The amateur Nostradamus would claim that the prototype of the juvenile/teen comedy will feel foreign as it too ages. It would be argued that the specialized form, over the classic, will not stand the test of the decades. When I am 80, I will know. So, I welcome you to join me for my follow-up article in 2070.