PG-13, 106 min.
Director/Writer: John Hughes
Starring: Kevin Bacon,
Elizabeth McGovern, Alec Baldwin, James Ray, Holland Taylor, William Windom,
Cathryn Damon, Reba McKinney, Bill Erwin, Paul Gleeson, Dennis Dugan, Anthony
Mockus Sr., John Ashton, Larry Hankin, Edie McClurg
The most disappointing thing
about John Hughes’ 1988 picture “She’s Having a Baby” is that it’s got such
great ideas behind it that never seem to reach any sort of velocity. It stars
Kevin Bacon as a young man giving up the bachelor life for the married one. He
struggles with the notion of settling down and abandoning his dreams of
becoming a writer to the responsibility of supporting his wife with an office
job writing for an ad agency. It finally culminates in the ultimate commitment
to familial conformity—having a baby.
Throughout all of this he
fantasizes about the things he’s giving up and the imprisonment of family life.
He succumbs to his overbearing father-in-law and daydreams about the women he
sees on the street. There’s a sequence when he imagines all the neighbors in
his subdivision doing a dance number while mowing their lawns. I mean this
could be some really funny stuff. However, right from the opening moments of
the film, the pace and tone is off. What should be a wacky comedy comes off
more as a serious movie studying the transition of a juvenile into a family
man.
It’s easy to tell this
material is close to writer/director John Hughes’ heart, but he tackles it in
too serious a manner. Although he both wrote and directed the movie, it’s as if
he had one side of his personality perform the tasks separately. It’s written
like a funny and imaginative knock on how we are willing to sacrifice
everything we are for something we love. It’s directed more like a serious
meditation on why it is necessary for the boy to conform to the man, no matter
how soul crushing it can be.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment