What's Up Doc (1972)

  I do not understand why anybody felt the need to add a carrot to Barbra's hand in this poster.  It's exceedingly dumb.  Also, I hated this movie.

Dr. Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) is a musicologist up for a prestigious grant and has traveled to San Francisco with his fiancée, Eunice (Madeline Kahn), to attend a reception and plead his case.  In the hotel drugstore, he is targeted by a young woman (Barbra Streisand) who inserts herself forcibly into his life in an effort to break up his relationship in her favor.  This is supposedly romantic.  Also, there's a completely unnecessary sub-plot involving four identical pieces of luggage.

Let's talk about Men Writing Women.  I have a pet theory (because I'm too lazy to put in the research time) that some men write what they think are "smart, feminist" women characters by giving them masculine traits and then can't understand why women don't respond to them.  Judy (Barbra Streisand's character) is self-absorbed, sexually forward, and can't take no for an answer, while also gaslighting and negging.  The movie's three male screenwriters want you to believe that makes her a go-getter instead of an asshole.  Ask any woman who's had to duck an overly attentive would-be Romeo in a bar and you'd realize that those are not desirable traits.  Making Howard a himbo (and he is a major himbo) doesn't make it better; it actually makes it worse.

This is in addition to the sad, tropey, Maiden-Mother-Crone archetypes in the 3 female characters.  Judy the Maiden is the only one put up by the film as sexually desirable.  Eunice is a micromanaging Mother shrew and Mrs. Van Hoskins is a septuagenarian who dresses like a 20-year-old.  Both are the targets of separate male characters' throwaway lines about how they are unfuckable hags.  Peter Bogdanovich can rot in hell for this.

I can see where the movie was attempting to be funny.  It's clearly aping older, better screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby, while also parodying elements of popular films of the time like Bullitt.  It was not for me.  Or for my mom, who remembered when people raved about it because Ryan O'Neal was apparently the Brad Pitt of the 70s (her words).  So maybe it's genetic.  If you want to give it a shot, it is streaming on Criterion Channel.