Synopsis: An Unexpected Comedy.

Academy Award winner Diane Keaton “is smashing” (Pauline Kael) as a high-powered career woman who inherits a baby — and discovers a side of herself she never knew she had…a maternal one! Co-starring Sam Shepard and James Spader, this “sophisticated, screwball comedy” (Rex Reed, “At the Movies”) about the pitfalls and payoffs of instant parenthood will put a smile on your face again and again.

J.C. Wiatt (Keaton) thinks she has it all together. Beautiful and talented, she’s on the road to certain success. So when an adorable baby girl comes into her life by way of a distant cousin’s will, it’s J.C. who breaks out in a rash! Juggling power lunches and powdered formula, she is soon forced off the fast track by a conniving colleague and a bigoted boss. But this lady won’t stay down for long. She’ll prove to the world that a woman can have it all — and on her own terms too!
***********************************************************************

Baby Boom 3.5

Sigh… it’s a real shame to see Diane Keaton get sucked into such a mess. And I don’t mean the mess her character finds herself in. I just think that she can do better than this low-grade comedy, by the team that would eventually bring us the ‘Father of the Bride’ films (featuring Steve Martin). I guess they saw the box-office gold of ‘Mr. Mom’ and ‘Three Men and a Baby’ and decided to do one for the ladies.

Hmph.

It’s bad enough that the script is tedious: it has fun chipping away at a powerful corporate woman, bit by bit, by suggesting that she couldn’t handle a personal and professional life. So, even though she is the most focused and brilliant woman on the block (or “The Tiger Lady”, as she’s nicknamed), she doesn’t have enough brains outside the workforce to roll with the punches or to have any foresight; suddenly she has a baby to take care of and her brain is in the diaper pail.

Hahaha! Seapking of which, watch Diane spend 2 mins of your time trying to put a diaper on the baby but being unable to figure it out. TOO funny! Watch her buy a house only to find out it’s derelic and all her hard-earned money gets syphoned by it. I’m laughing so hard I’m hurting. Watch her pick two dozen HUGE baskets of apples to make ONE apple pie. What a nutty woman she is! ROAR!

Urgh.

But, to top it all off, the direction is so heavy-handed it’s maddening; there is such a thing as subtlety, but this director doesn’t know the meaning of being understated. He just smacks the viewer across the head with one rotten flounder after the other (“Dude, I got it the first time. I even got it before you insisted on doing a close up. So, let me try to enjoy this mess, if that’s at all possible”). Well, I guess you can lead this horse to comedy “gold”, but you can’t make him laugh.

Anyway, this is very light fare – it’s Hollywood shlock. So please check your brain at the door. Oh, and don’t have babies. Babies are bad news.