Maybe Baby
*
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Redbus on June 2, 2000; certificate 15; 104 minutes;
country of origin UK; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Ben Elton; produced by Phil
McIntyre.
Written by Ben Elton; based on his novel "Inconceivable".
Photographed by Roger Lanser; edited by Peter
Hollywood.
CAST.....
Hugh Laurie..... Sam Bell
Joely Richardson..... Lucy Bell
Adrian Lester..... George
James Purefoy..... Carl Phipps
Tom Hollander..... Ewan Proclaimer
Joanna Lumley..... Sheila
To see Ben Elton's "Maybe Baby"
is to suffer one of the most embarrassing of things -- a comedian straining
to be funny. Successful humour comes out naturally and clearly; it doesn't
need to be underlined, shouted or propped up by outlandish gags. There is
a scene in this movie where a guy is being read the results of a sperm test,
which tell him that a percentage of his little tadpoles are sluggish.
"Sluggish?!" he cries. "Couldn't they have figured out a better way of putting
it, like 'relaxed'? Relaxed sperm!" When he's told that some are swimming
in the wrong direction: "Hello?! They're in a plastic cup!!"
These same lines could be funny, if the guy was
desperately muttering them to himself, as rambling thoughts. I can picture
Woody Allen playing it like that. But Hugh Laurie, the actor onscreen, shouts
and makes expressive gestures, as if playing to a sitcom laughter track.
A lot of "Maybe Baby" is like that -- although on the surface the problem
seems to be a cheesy screenplay, it's actually the delivery that's off. I
kept imagining what the dialogue would sound like if spoken more calmly,
and much of it would be witty, warm and funny. That is not a defence of
writer-director Elton, but simply an observation. Comedy is a fifty-fifty
balancing act of writing and performing, so to screw up even one of these
is no small matter.
The story involves a thirtysomething married couple
-- happy, well-off, but desperately in want of a child. Sam (Laurie) and
Lucy (Joely Richardson) make love morning and night, in time slots carefully
planned around Lucy's menstrual cycle, but months go by without any sign
of pregnancy. So they begin to try In Vitro Fertilisation treatment; a long,
frustrating process that alternately tests their wits and brings them closer
together, what with its great need for patience and emotional
commitment.
It would be fascinating to see a real movie about
the subject of IVF. "Maybe Baby" is not it. We don't get answers to our obvious
curiosities, such as whether or not Sam and Lucy get a kid, or how they react
to that success or failure. Instead, the plot veers off into Sam writing
a screenplay about his marriage, producing it in secret, and then having
to heal Lucy's anger when she finds out. Even when Elton is concentrating
on the IVF storyline, he seems more interested in the goofy side-characters
it gives him a chance to introduce. Among them are a loudmouth Scottish film
director (Tom Hollander), a burlesque Australian nurse (Dawn French), and
an insane gynaecologist who sadistically dangles his instruments (Rowan
Atkinson). None of these people are believable, and since this isn't a slapstick
comedy, that means they're not funny.
As I've said, anything perceptive that might have
existed in the dialogue is ruined by the over-the-top delivery, so ultimately
we're left with nothing interesting but a couple of sexy shots of Joely
Richardson. Elton based "Maybe Baby" on his novel "Inconceivable", which
he has said was inspired in concept but not content on his own IVF experiences.
His reason for not making it more autobiographical was that he felt it would
be more personally comfortable to invent contrived humour for the story than
use the truth. That's exactly the opposite of how comedians are supposed
to work.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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