From the first shots, it's apparent this film is made by a skilled director and actors. Hawks' camera is fluid, and the banter between Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn shows often impeccable timing. However, two flaws exist which sink this boat before it even leaves port. First, it's not that funny. There are an overabundance of gags and what people who try too hard tend to refer to as "madcap high jinks," but most of them fall flat. Second, and this is most fatal, Hepburn's character, Susan Vance, manages to be both unsympathetic and not make any sense. Cary Grant (and the writers) are no help as he gives no sign of any attraction back in this, what I can only assume to be, "romantic comedy."
You see, Susan wants to marry paleontologist David Huxley (Grant). Why? An animal attraction? In the guise of Katharine Hepburn? Please. Some other reason, perhaps? We're neither shown nor told. We're just supposed to accept she's an absent-minded idle riche who sees a flappable man one day and decides in a beat she wants to marry him. That would be fine for most comedies—a little flimsy, but it wouldn't kill it. However, there's something in the way. David is engaged to be married to an uptight colleague who wants to have a modern marriage where work and career take precedence. After all, uncovering the fossil history of the Earth is important. This is a very modern perspective, but it's portrayed for very regressive reasons. The writers want to make it easy for Grant to part with this shrew and find true love with someone more acceptable. The problem is Hepburn knows he's engaged, practically from the first scene meeting him. This causes her no hesitation, doesn't stop her one moment. In one instance, she actually laughs at his mentioning it.
What follows are several misadventures where Susan and David bump into each other under unfortunate circumstances. He's in Connecticut hunting down one last fossil piece for his dinosaur exhibit while at the same time trying to secure a large donation from the very wealthy Elizabeth Random, who coincidentally is Susan's aunt. Susan uses this to scheme her way into his business and keep him from returning home to get married. This is where the madcap part comes in (lacks key for eyeroll). The bone goes missing, a leopard comes into the picture (the "baby" in the title), and it all crashes together in a long jailhouse sequence which I thought would never end. It's here the film takes a war of attrition approach to comedy. I guess they figure they can wear the audience down and time it just right so you want to laugh and not shoot yourself. I wanted to shoot myself.
All this makes Hepburn's character coldly malicious if you think about it for one-tenth of a second. She barely knows David and never once met his fiancee. Nevertheless, she decides to destroy their lives together, sight unseen. Hepburn's considerable acting skills and charisma do little to win any sympathy because the part is so underwritten. Not that she doesn't have anything to say. She's in practically every scene and has plenty of lines, but it's all so shallow. She exists to serve a construct of screwball plotting and situation with no thought to how to make her resonate as a real person with audiences.
Then there's Grant's side of the equation. He acts like a man continuously in pain at his predicament, and Hepburn's presence does nothing to change his outlook. In fact, I couldn't find one scene or one instance where he seemed to brighten at her presence. In their many entanglements, he constantly complains he wants nothing more to do with her but curiously doesn't act on it. He's strangely passive throughout in a way that's not revealing, but rather opaque. The script doesn't give him any depth, either. This is confirmed in the end when he grabs Hepburn's hand under a collapsing brontosaurus exhibit and rescues her from the wreckage, finally declaring his love for her. He does it with all the enthusiasm of a guy being confronted by a flat tire when walking out to his car. I wasn't convinced by any of this.
The scene in the restaurant with the torn dress—that was funny. If only the reel had run out of film at that point, I'd have said, "Wow, what a lost classic." Unfortunately we have to endure the rest of it.
