What's Up, Doc?

What's Up, Doc? is, I guess, just a perfect film. I can remember exactly one other movie of its ilk that I watched with sheer glee — amazed by how contemporaneously funny it was, by how awful it was, and by how obviously, in retrospect, it influenced so much of the genre: the-thin-man. But even more so than that film, What's Up, Doc? is all gas, no brakes. The commitment to screwball never wavers, not even for a single second, ramping up and up and up in abject silliness until — as Babs says in a memorable closing line — you simply surrender to its tidal wave. Here's a confession I'll offer in lieu of anything interesting to say about this terrific, hilarious film that I recommend wholeheartedly: I don't think I've actually ever seen anything with Barbra Streisand in it before. In one of those self-reflexive memes, I know her more for the Streisand effect — literally the name — than any specific work of art. Until now. And she is so completely winning in this, in a way that I don't…