We both think Hepburn is the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl (a positive for one of us, a negative for the other), and we're similarly divided on the popcorn.
Dave: Well, this was a mess. Perhaps it’s just something about the movie’s age, but everyone seemed to be playing a caricature of their role, like they were a bunch of circus clowns and child actors suddenly thrown into a feature film. And oddly, it could have worked! Katharine Hepburn was the thing that made the movie watchable - she did a swan dive into a zany role that may have well helped to generate the manic pixie dream girl trope years later. The character actors that filled out the cast were similarly all-in on roles like the hapless sheriff, the befuddled big game hunter, and the always-irritated rich lady. The leopards were also very leopard-y. Cary Grant, though, brought everything down - he seemed to not realize everyone else was overacting in one-dimensional roles because he tried to be meek and nerdy while also yelling a lot and occasionally Being In Charge. Grant’s Jekyll and Hyde act wasn’t helped by a script that seemed to be written by a Billy Wilder knockoff who thought they could replace the witty repartee of Wilder’s best screenplays with idiotic tripe, coaching the actors to say them quickly in Continental accents so no one would be the wiser. Hepburn got the occasional chuckle, but otherwise it was a slog (⭐️⭐️)
Joe swears that we’ve made almost this same popcorn recipe before, but it doesn’t taste familiar. I think I’d have remembered the slightly greasy, fishy, and bland taste. Really, how do you make a recipe that uses soy sauce that’s still not salty enough? Also, this recipe required baking and stirring *after* popping the popcorn. That is too much work for a recipe that only tasted really good when I found a handful at the bottom that had gotten soaked in extra butter. It would have been easier to just eaten a tablespoon of butter out of the fridge and called it a night. (⭐️⭐️1/2)
Joe: Holy shit, that was exhausting. Here's the "plot": Cary Grant (total hottie, btw - and I will die on that hill) plays a bumbling professor. Katharine Hepburn plays a manic tornado of a human being, all machine-gun-fire monologues and scurrying to and fro. She convinces him to deliver a leopard to her aunt. Hilarity ensues. They fall in love after she rocks back and forth on a ladder like a lunatic and summarily collapses one of his museum's dinosaur replicas. If you're scratching your head, join the club. I could barely keep up with the breakneck plot points, and nothing anyone did made a lick of sense. And Hepburn - fabulous, fabulous Hepburn - is a walking migraine. I found myself just needing her to shut up for two seconds so I could collect my wits. I never had the opportunity. (⭐1/2)
Oh, Popcorn Board. You tricky, tricky strumpet. Before settling on this recipe, I checked our past blog posts a few times to make absolute certain we hadn't already eaten it. The ingredients, though, seemed so familiar. I had remembered us buying rice cracker mix for a popcorn - and fairly recently, too. I pored over our past entries again. Something caught my eye: Asian Popcorn Medley, also a Popcorn Board concoction. I looked up the recipe and compared it to "Chinese New Year Medley". Reader, they were the exact same recipe. But we vowed to make All The Popcorns... even if we were tricked. Apparently, I really liked Asian Popcorn Medley. Dave thought it was so-so*. I loved this iteration. It was delicious. Fool me once, Popcorn Board. Fool me twice and three times if it's this good. (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2)
* now that I've read his review, there's something to be said for consistency
Popcorn recipe from: Popcorn Board
Bringing Up Baby on IMDB.
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