Tuesday 4 August 2009

Three Men and a Baby (Smaltz Review)


Dir: Leonard Nimoy

Starring: Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson, That Girl from So I Married an Axe Murderer

Ah eighties family films…don’t you just love them. They really don’t make them like they used to. This ticks just about every box, although it is perhaps a little bit more grown up than say Karate Kid or Mighty Ducks but you get the idea.

Here’s the premise: A cartoonist, an architect and an actor live in a big house enjoying there bachelor lives. Here’s the punch line, hunky actor Danson has fathered a child unknowingly and is filming abroad. His two friends wake up one morning to find a baby on their door step. They are of course completely inept and have no idea what to do with a baby, which generates most of the film's laughs.

To make things worse, when Danson comes home he has been asked to carry over a package which turns out to be drugs. This leads to some comic run-ins with the police, namely Tom Selleck hiding the packet in the babies nappy, and puts our protagonists in danger.

This is the films McGuffin as it creates a false ending. The real drama involves the baby mother coming back as she regrets giving up her baby.

It’s an enjoyable romp with Pi Selleck arguably stealing the film. It never gets too mushy and the real ending is quite tense and moving.

Good

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