What's Up, Doc? · reception & legacy
1972 · Peter Bogdanovich
How What's Up, Doc? has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A monster hit on release — the third-biggest film of 1972, behind only The Godfather and The Poseidon Adventure — even as some critics sniffed that it was just recycled Hawks. Fifty years on it's settled comfortably into 'best screwball comedy made after the screwball era,' the middle jewel of Bogdanovich's legendary Last Picture Show / Paper Moon run.
What's debated
The eternal fan debate: is it a worthy heir to Bringing Up Baby or an expert karaoke cover of one — and is Streisand's Judy delightful chaos or exhausting?
Its footprint
The final-scene zinger — Ryan O'Neal's 'Love means never having to say you're sorry' met with Streisand's 'That's the dumbest thing I ever heard' — skewers O'Neal's own Love Story and is one of Hollywood's most quoted meta-jokes. Its San Francisco chase is a permanent reference point for comedy car chases.
Where it stands
A beloved comfort classic and a favorite cinephile gateway drug to screwball comedy — the safe 'watch this with anyone' pick in the Bogdanovich canon.
Named by the director
Influences Peter Bogdanovich has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Bringing Up Baby (1938) — Bogdanovich openly pitched and described the film as his update of Hawks's screwball classic — absent-minded professor, chaos-agent heroine and all.
- Howard Hawks — Bogdanovich, who had interviewed Hawks at length, publicly framed the whole picture as an homage to Hawks's screwball comedies, down to the rapid-fire overlapping dialogue.
- Buster Keaton — Bogdanovich said the big chase was his attempt at a silent-comedy chase in the Keaton/Harold Lloyd tradition.