joachimokeefe Review of Maybe Baby

Maybe Baby (2000)

Sequence of bawdy sketches followed by sophomoric twaddle

[2/10 · 28 June 2007]

You can tell that this is going to be a joyless experience by the strangled, off-key gurgling of that trite old Buddy Holly tune by none other than Sir Paul (John owed it all to me) MacCartney, the well known chipmunk-cheeked murderer of music. Of course, Joely Richardson in and out of her knickers and simulating sex, even with Hugh (Doc House) Laurie, is enough to sustain most (straight) men's interest for half an hour, and I suppose (straight) women will enjoy Hugh Laurie 'daringly' being the butt of (predictable) masturbation gags for the same length of time. The gag where she slides off her scooter after visiting the gynecologist is the high spot. By then it should have dawned on anyone that this film has no story, beyond the two elements that are bolted on to keep the non-characters alive: 1) Joely Richardson, in spite of having wild sex five times a day, wants to go over the side with a 'dishy' actor, and 2) Hugh Laurie, whose amphetamine intake is never actually disclosed, is eventually stung into writing a first-time smash-hit film script by a poorly written Scots nuisance who ends up directing it with the dishy actor as lead. The fact of its being based on his wife's oh-so-secret diary causes them to split up for a few months. That's it. End of story. The film starts to drag after the gags have run out - Ben Elton's forte is the half-hour sitcom after all - and as the script descends further into trite, turgid cliché after trite, turgid cliché, a few Shakespeare references are thrown in to show just how pretentious the project is, and all the usual Britflick club members are wheeled out to do their party pieces; they even squeeze in Dawn French, the Paul MacCartney of comedy. By the end Joely Richardson's hips begin to look distinctly childbearing. It's particularly annoying that it's about the very special pain of extremely middle-class people, (the 'park' is an enclosed private condo garden), while the views of the film business that are presumably intended to be satirical only communicate a sort of sleazy tedium. Do they have a baby at the end? ***MAJOR SPOILER TO SAVE NINETY MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE*** Elton doesn't say, they just simulate sex in public a lot more. It's a wind-up.