What’s Up, Doc? has to do with four guests who check into a hotel on the same day, with identical overnight bags. The first bag contains diamonds, the second underwear, the third prehistoric rocks and the fourth top secret papers. The bag with the  underwear belongs to Barbra Streisand, a freeloader without a penny to her name, who falls in love with Ryan O’Neal, who has brought the rocks to demonstrate a theory at a musicologist’s convention. The jewels belong to a Margaret Dumont type and the state secrets are being tracked by an international spy.

Bogdanovich proves himself a master of screwball comedy. He gives us everything we hope for: a onesided courtship, a spinsterish fiancée, a scene at a formal banquet with everybody winding up under the table, a hilarious hotel corridor sequence, a chase, remarkable coincidences, a pie fight and all the rest. What’s Up, Doc? is only about 90 minutes long, takes
no time for sloppy romantic scenes, and remembers to be funny even when Miss Streisand is singing.

Roger Ebert

Ryan O'Neal will participate in a Q&A after the screening with Festival Director Gráinne Humphreys.

 

Please note that the festival is over 18s only