Duck: Friends, we decided it was time to review some classic romance movies, and what’s more classic than Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and a sweet-hearted leopard? But the truth is simple: When we watched Bringing Up Baby, we laughed so hard my beak-holes got blocked—and this time, pondweed-crunch ice-cream had nothing to do with it.
Star: We did spend the first thirty minutes of the movie ON THE FLOOR because it was so ducking funny!
Duck: I was laughing so hard that my WHOLE FLIPPER was stuffed in my beak. (It tasted a little salty, which means it’s time for Star to switch on the Roomba. Star?)
Star: Can’t. Sir Mallard’s asleep on it. Quacker-snoring. Loudly.
Duck: Oh! I warned him against having that nightcap last night, but the duck does love his Pimms. If you switch the bot on, Star, he’ll just dream he’s drifting around a Medieval moat. Or that he’s on King Charles’ vibrating massage table again—which, I’ve heard, is great for stiff flippers.
Star: Got it! Anyway, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant were brilliant in Bringing Up Baby. The plot? David Huxley (Grant), a paleontologist who is about to get hitched, is desperately seeking a million-dollar endowment for his museum. But as he tries to procure it, he gets hopelessly entangled with the hyper, intuitive, super-silly Susan Vance, not to mention a leopard called Baby—and no matter how hard David tries to paddle away from them, Susan and that leopard seem to have him glued ….
Duck: The comedy is MADCAP. (Or as we ducks like to say, MADQUACK.) And the romance itself rolls along at a flipper-tickling pace. We learn early on that Susan, who’s just met David, has fuzzy-duck feelings for him. But David is getting married tomorrow so there’s little time for Susan to win his duck-heart. Then, of course, there’s Baby the leopard, who has NOTHING to do with ducks. Plus an important missing dinosaur bone, jail, unintentional dress-ripping … and that’s just for starters.
Star: Sometimes, a movie doesn’t SEEM to be a romance.
Duck: Even though it has ducks in it. For about three seconds.
Star: For me, the movie SEEMS more like a whacky, high-paced comedy with a deadline that escalates the shenanigans. But under the surface, it’s the romance that drives it all. And with the wedding deadline looming, the entanglement between David and Susan becomes more and more transparent, until we realize it has little to do with a missing dinosaur bone. Nope. It’s all about David and Susan being COMPLETELY DUCKING ENTHRALLED by one another, even though David seems so overwrought. And THAT’S a romance.
Duck: This quote from David says, or quacks, it all: “Now it isn’t that I don’t like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I’m strangely drawn toward you, but—well, there haven’t been any quiet moments.”
Star: Ducking genius. Five full flippers.
Duck: And a pint of goldfish-cola for those ducks.
At the time of writing, you can watch Bringing Up Baby here, usually for a rental fee:
Featured image courtesy of Bringing Up Baby. Designed by Star Tavares.
Romancey Pants 
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