Film
Bringing Up Baby
The blueprint for screwball comedy at its most unhinged: a buttoned-up paleontologist, a runaway heiress, a pet leopard, and one missing dinosaur bone, all spiraling through an hour and forty minutes of pure comic velocity. Hepburn and Grant trade barbs at breakneck speed while the plot demolishes every trace of order in its path. It's for anyone who wants comedy as pure adrenaline — dialogue as a weapon, farce as physics.
If you liked this
The Philadelphia Story1940
Grant and Hepburn reunite, this time with Jimmy Stewart, in a wittier, more polished screwball about class, ego, and remarriage that shows how far she could push the same chemistry.
But It's calmer and more prestige than manic; if you wanted more leopard-level chaos, this feels almost sedate by comparison.

His Girl Friday1940
Grant at his fastest, trading rapid-fire newsroom banter with Rosalind Russell in a comedy that moves even quicker than Baby and never stops to breathe.
But The dialogue is delivered so fast some viewers find it exhausting rather than exhilarating, especially on a first watch.

The Awful Truth1937
Grant again, a year earlier, sparring with Irene Dunne through a divorce-turned-courtship farce that shows exactly where his screwball timing was built before Baby perfected it.
But Lower stakes and no animal chaos means it's gentler and less frantic than what you just watched.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Game Night2018
Same structural engine as Baby — a controlled, orderly couple gets swept into escalating, life-threatening chaos by a chaos-agent, here a kidnapping plot instead of a leopard, forcing them to loosen up together.
Modern screwball energy transplanted into a crime-comedy costume, with whip-fast married-couple banter and set-pieces that spiral more absurdly the more anyone tries to regain control.
But The tone leans darker and more violent at times, with real guns and real danger layered under the jokes.

More like this (8)
My Man Godfrey1936
A rich family of lunatics, a butler with a secret, and the same anything-goes energy that treats social order as something to be joyfully wrecked.
But William Powell's dry cool is a different flavor of funny than Grant's flustered charm, if that's what you're chasing.

It Happened One Night1934
The film that essentially invented the genre: a runaway heiress and a cynical reporter bicker their way into love on a road trip full of manufactured disasters.
But It's quieter and more grounded, with none of the surreal escalation that makes Baby so gleefully absurd.

Ball of Fire1941
Barbara Stanwyck plays chaos incarnate to Gary Cooper's stuffy professor, a mirror image of David and Susan dressed up as slang-versus-academia instead of bones-versus-leopard.
But The gangster subplot gives it a slightly different tone, less pure farce and more crime comedy hybrid.

The Lady Eve1941
Stanwyck again, this time as a con artist dismantling Henry Fonda's naive scientist with the same delight Susan takes in wrecking David's careful life.
But It's sharper and a little crueler underneath the comedy, less warm-hearted than Baby's ultimate romance.

Twentieth Century1934no page yet
Carole Lombard and John Barrymore go full theatrical meltdown aboard a train, an earlier, even more unhinged blueprint for two people driving each other completely mad.
But The theatrical, hammy performances can feel broader and stagier than the naturalism you might expect after Baby.
What's Up, Doc?1972no page yet
Peter Bogdanovich's loving, direct homage swaps the leopard for a stolen briefcase and Barbra Streisand for Hepburn's chaos, proving the formula still worked forty years later.
But It's more knowing and referential than original, and some find the constant nodding to old Hollywood distracting.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness2020
Baby's exotic-pet-as-plot-device becomes horrifyingly real: this is what actually happens when people try to live with big cats, and the chaos stops being charming and becomes a genuine cautionary tale.
If Susan's pet leopard delighted you, this documentary series shows the real-world version — big cat ownership as reckless spectacle, and just as unbelievable, minus the laugh track.
But It's trashy true-crime rather than romantic comedy, and the humor curdles fast once you register the animal cruelty and human harm underneath it.

Sherlock Jr.1924
Fourteen years before Baby, Keaton was already building comedy from a meticulous, orderly man's world being physically demolished piece by piece — the same architecture of escalating disaster, just silent and solo instead of verbal and romantic.
Keaton's stunt work is the physical-comedy ancestor of Baby's farce, a silent film where the gags are engineered with such precision they still land a century later.
But No dialogue, no romance banter — if what you loved was the verbal sparring between Grant and Hepburn, this delivers none of that.

People
Cast
Katharine HepburnSusan
Cary GrantDavid
Charles RugglesMajor Applegate
Walter CatlettSlocum
Barry FitzgeraldMr. Gogarty
May RobsonAunt Elizabeth
Fritz FeldDr. Lehman
Leona RobertsMrs. Gogarty
George IrvingMr. Peabody
Tala BirellMrs. Lehman
Virginia WalkerAlice Swallow
John KellyElmer
Directing
- Edward DonahueAssistant Director
- Howard HawksDirector
Writing
- Hagar WildeOriginal Story
- Dudley NicholsScreenplay
- Hagar WildeScreenplay
- Hagar WildeStory
Production
- Cliff ReidAssociate Producer
- Howard HawksProducer
Recommended by
Some Like It Hot, It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, My Man Godfrey, Arsenic and Old Lace, Ball of Fire, The Lady Eve, The Awful Truth, The Thin Man, Top Hat, Ninotchka, You Can't Take It with You, Woman of the Year, After the Thin Man, I Was a Male War Bride, The Palm Beach Story, Pat and Mike, Design for Living, Topper, A Night at the Opera