Baby Boom

United Artists. Director Charles Shyer; Producer Nancy Meyers; Screenplay Nancy Meyers, Charles Shyer; Camera William A. Fraker; Editor Lynzee Klingman; Music Bill Conti; Art Director Jeffrey Howard

Diane Keaton
Harold Ramis
Sam Wanamaker
James Spader
Pat Hingle
Sam Shepard

A transparent and one-dimensional parable about a power-devouring female careerist and the unwanted bundle of joy that turns her obsessive fast-track life in Gotham upside down. Constructed almost entirely upon facile and familiar media cliches about 'parenting' and the super-yuppie set, Baby Boom has the superficiality of a project inspired by a lame New York magazine cover story and sketched out on a cocktail napkin at Spago's.

J.C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) is a dressed-for-success management consultant whose steamroller ambition has earned this workaholic the proudly flaunted nickname, 'Tiger Lady'. She lives in trendy high-rise splendor with bland investment banker Steven Buchner (Harold Ramis), to whom she reluctantly allots a four-minute slot for lovemaking before returning to late-night paperwork.

Suddenly, J.C. learns that a cousin has died together with her husband in an accident in England. J.C. is intrigued to learn that she's inherited something from this misfortune but, to her considerable shock, this turns out to be a precious apple-cheeked 12-month old girl, Elizabeth (Kristina and Michelle Kennedy).

Baby Boom tries to be a lot funnier than it actually is, and handsome production design and cinematography do little to compensate for its annoying over-reliance on cornball action montages and a dreadfully saccharine soudtrack score.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1987. Running time: 103 MIN.

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