Maybe Baby DVD

Advantages: Tom Hollander supeb performance, a selection of tremendous scenes.
Disadvantages: The miscast cameos... uneven combination of humour and drama in places.

...I was concerned. Maybe Baby is the film made from Ben Elton’s book, Inconceivable, the story of a thirty something couple who are trying to have a baby. It is based, apparently, on Elton’s own experiences. Hugh Laurie and the gorgeous Joely Richardson play the couple in question, Sam and Lucy. She was last seen in the topic of my last film review The Patriot. There are also a whole host of cameos from the usual crowd… Joanna Lumley, ...
...or watch… To me Maybe Baby seemed to suffer from a slight identity crisis. The amusing initial scene… a phone call from Lucy to Sam who is the middle of a ‘new’ BBC meeting with the enticing request for sex… is followed by him jumping on his motorbike and storming off home, firmly sets the tone for humour. However after the initial play for humour the story develops and the film seems to reach for a more emotional response ... Read review

Advantages: It’s a big screen British comedy.
Disadvantages: Not genuinely funny enough though.

Ben Elton’s debut as a director encompasses his own experiences with IVF (and of course, adapted from his book, ‘Inconceivable’), ‘Maybe Baby’ goes from one mood to another without really finding a firm footing as it shifts from an air of romantic comedy to drama, quite quickly. The story involves Sam (Hugh Laurie) and Lucy (Joely Richardson) when they find out they cannot naturally conceive, become increasingly desperate ...
...the BBC as a producer and agent. Together, they go through the process of IVF.... Lucy however, is on the verge of having an affair AND Sam is having adulterous thoughts. Sam is secretly writing a film and basing it on THEIR life. Lucy disapproves and this threatens their relationship.... It begins affable enough being funny, then edges it’s way to a dramatic conclusion. Some of the best scenes are inevitably when the pair are in hospital. ... Read review

Advantages: Better than you might anticipate, generally
Disadvantages: Not quite as witty as it thinks it is, possibly

...Inconceivable, and therefore Maybe Baby, deals with infertility and a couple's increasingly desperate attempts to produce a sprog. Elton's first-hand association with the often de-humanising machinations and rigmarole that childless families have to endure gives Maybe Baby a level of insight and wry humour that could so easily have ended up farcical and bereft of credible emotion or drama. Fear not, for this film is no Mad Cows. Instead, we have ...
...much does here too. Maybe Baby is resolutely nice...which these days is quixotically more of a sin than being a nasty, vulgar slice of cheap exploitation. No matter, it's a relief to have at least a small handful of British movies every year or two which don't subscribe to that school of film-making. In fact, a running joke through the script is a thinly-veiled swipe at that very style perpetrated by Studios and TV Stations alike. Elton, once the ... Read review

Advantages: funny, great cast, interesting plot
Disadvantages: not as good as the book

...the book (Still with me?), Maybe Baby. We had both enjoyed reading it and looked forward to seeing the movie version. Of course, with hindsight, we realised we should have seen the film before reading the book – so a warning to anyone out there, get it round the right way! The movie was made last year and stars Joely Richardson as Lucy with Hugh Laurie as her husband, Sam Bell. As in the book, the main focus of the story is about their infertility ...
...turns up at the door but without the right package. It’ll be interesting to see what people thought to it as a stand-alone film, not having read the book, maybe they enjoyed it more. I would certainly recommend it, it’s worth seeing, but is inferior to the novel. ... Read review

Advantages: great cast, the shakespeare!
Disadvantages: not funny, misses its potential

As ciao seems to be a family forum I'll refrain from naming the part of the giant chalk man's anatomy which appears in this movie, but given the subject of the movie, and the fact I won't name it, I'm guessing you got there already. Famous fertility rite apparently. So the formidable and witch-like Drusilla, played by Emma Thompson tells the keen-to-be-parents, Sam and Lucy Bell. Sam and Lucy Bell, played by Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson, are ...
...important thing in either of their lives, desperate enough to try the wacky suggestions of the witchy Drusilla, even desperate enough to try all that conventional fertility treatment has to offer. Predictably this makes for some comic moments, but although the potential for this to be an absolutely hilarious movie is all there in the cast and subject matter, once again this is a British comedy which somehow misses it. I found myself writing scenes ... Read review