I really wanted to like this, and it has it’s moments, but I could not get into either Grant’s or Hepburn’s character. She’s a self-possessed motor-mouth heiress (the trailers call her “flutter-brained”); he’s a paleontology professor with neither a spine nor a brain, and he’s got a decidedly loveless cold fish for a fiancee. He manages to lose a dinosaur bone most important to him and ignore his own wedding as he traipses off with a leopard named “Baby” and has a run-in with a pompous local constable. “Screwloose” is a good description of the film. It’s not a bad movie at all, but certainly NOT deserving of a place on AFI’s Top 100 list.

They don’t make screwball comedies like this anymore and it is a shame. There is an inherent sweetness to this movie that most modern comedies lack. Nowadays, comedy has to either be crude, or analytical, or witty. This film is just silly for the sake of being silly, yet it manages to still be very funny, lively and appealing 70 years after it was filmed.