Animals play a significant role in Bringing Up Baby, adding absurdity to the comic situations and its theme of

crazed infatuation. When we first meet him, palaeontologist David Huxley (Grant) is preparing to marry his co-worker Alice Swallow (Walker). Alice, we learn, is a rational, no-nonsense woman who sees marriage as a convenient and rational transaction rather than as an expression of love. As the film opens, David and Alice are putting the final touches on a brontosaurus skeleton that he has been working on for five years. The skeleton seems to be a symbol of the couple's relationship - dry, brittle, tenuous, old and, most importantly, dead.

Enter Susan Vance (Hepburn), whose wild anarchic nature is just what the doctor ordered. She seems, on the surface, hair-brained - and this may be true - but her ditziness is the result of being absolutely, utterly, ridiculously head-over-heals in love (at first sight, as is the case with most l'amour fou scenarios) with David and doing whatever she can to sabotage his plans to marry Alice. Susan's leopard, named Baby, is the symbol of her love for David, for the moment the leopard lays its eyes on him, it is instantly affectionate and follows him around, just as Susan does. Jittery David is, of course, terrified of the beast and all that it represents.

The leopard becomes an increasingly useful symbol as the film continues. At her aunt's estate in Connecticut, Susan releases another leopard its cage, thinking it is Baby captured by zoo officials when in fact it is a rogue leopard from the circus on its way to be gassed after attacking someone. With two leopards on the loose, the analogy becomes unmistakable - the wild leopard that Susan releases is David's libido, free at last after being repressed for so long in a loveless relationship. Indeed, towards the end of the film, when the wild leopard traps the host of characters in the local jail, it is nervous, terrified David who steps up and boldly saves the day.

This I suppose is just one way of reading and enjoying a film like Bringing Up Baby. i think it's interesting that the film announces its interested in exploring psychoanalysis with the inclusion of a character who is a Freudian therapist (Dr Lehman played by Fritz Feld). Psychoanalysis was, of course, very popular among Hollywood screenwriters between the 30s and 50s who adopted all manner of coded symbols for sex after Joseph Breen's Production Code so tightly reasserted control over what could and couldn't be represented on screen. But the fact that Dr Lehman's diagnoses are so far off tells us that the science of the mind is no match for the power of l'amour fou, which turns men and women into wild, irrational carnal beasts.

I'm a huge fan of Hawk's His Girl Friday, but my enthusiasm for that film does not carry over to Bringing Up Baby. Hepburn and Grant are both solid but the hijinks, slapstick, and banter between the stars simply does not work here. I actually found Bringing Up Baby to be more irritating than entertaining. Grant and Hepburn have worked together quite well, as in The Philadelphia Story, but I think one of the obstacles to this film is that they haven't yet figured out their timing and rhythm to a degree that they work well together. It will come with time but they still had some kinks to work out at this point.

Dr. David Huxley has two reasons to be excited. He is about to be married and the final piece to a brontosaurus, the showpiece to his museum exhibit, will soon be in his possession. Furthermore, if he plays his cards right, a wealthy donor will donate $1 million to his museum, to aid his palaeontological collection. Unfortunately, he meets Susan, a woman who seems destined to unintentionally destroy his life. Huxley soon finds himself playing nursemaid to Baby, her leopard.

Directed by Howards Hawks and starring Cary Grant as Huxley and Katharine Hepburn as Susan, this movie is ostensibly a comedy classic. That's hard to fathom, unless extreme irritation is classified as comedy.

The irritation starts almost from the word go. Somehow we are meant to be believe that someone stealing another person's car and then smashing it up in nonchalant fashion is funny. Susan is incredibly annoying and there is no light at the end of the tunnel - the annoyance continues throughout the movie, down to and including the final scene.

It's not just Susan - the whole 'plot' is random and just involves dumb things happening. Yes, it's slapstick but there is hardly anything funny about it.