“What's Up, Doc?”

Peter Bogdanovich paid tribute to 1930s screwball comedies in this 1972 lark starring Ryan O'Neal as Howard Bannister, a henpecked geologist/musicologist (carrying a plaid satchel full of prehistoric rocks that he uses with his tuning fork), Madeline Kahn (in her feature debut) as Howard's smothering fiancée Eunice, and Barbra Streisand as Judy, a kooky free spirit who takes a shine to the absent-minded professor. Screenwriters Buck Henry, David Newman, and Robert Benton spin the story into a cascade of comic collisions as two other characters carrying briefcases identical to Bannister's—a mystery man with top-secret documents and a rich matron with a small fortune in jewels—become entwined with the central trio in a San Francisco hotel where the bags wind up being shuffled. The romantic dynamic is inspired by the classic Bringing Up Baby, and while O'Neal is not quite Cary Grant, he does make an amiable straight man trying to maintain his sanity while the manic Streisand proceeds to wreak havoc. For all the slapstick gags and cartoonish craziness, Bogdanovich presents the film like a classical Hollywood farce, as the camera simply watches the action unfold. As old-fashioned and entertaining as the movies that inspired it, What's Up Doc? bows on Blu-ray with audio commentary by Bogdanovich, scene-specific commentary by Streisand, and an archival featurette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)