Maybe Baby DVD > Reviews > Bittersweet Romantic Comedy With Plenty Of Appeal

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

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

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The British Film Industry might not be good for much in recent times, with one spurious concoction of violence and debauchery after another appearing to constitute 90% of its annual output.

It is, however, still rather effective when it comes to the Middle-class English Romantic Comedy. Four Weddings, Sliding Doors, Martha Meets Frank..., and even Notting Hill - they are a distinctive breed, and not as easy to pull off as some would have you believe.

Erstwhile stand-up comedian and now best-selling author Ben Elton has adapted his own novel - "Inconceivable" - for the big screen, and also directed it himself. It marks his first foray into helming a movie - clearly, he felt a strong link with the material. Not at all surprising given that the story is based on his own experiences.

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 an extremely likeable, if blandly-drawn, 30-something couple played very appealingly by Hugh Laurie (Sam) and the lovely Joely Richardson (Lucy). As ever, they live in the swish part of London, the kind of existence which the characters of films like this always seem able to maintain whatever befalls them. Ben Elton must have watched Sliding Doors and thought, "yeah...I'll do my film just like that". And why not? It worked perfectly well then, and it pretty 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 spearhead of a brash and (then) alternative line of anarchic comedy, is now the upholder of rather more traditional humour...but the punchline is that he's actually lost very little of his bite, and his targets are still expertly lampooned.

The film is part-produced by the BBC, and intially the prominence of the corporation within the plot does have a slightly disingenuous air about it, but then Elton does of course work for Auntie Beeb himself, so that's alright then. We should be glad it doesn't succumb to the rather distasteful lip-service that the recent Millennium Dome-linked Blackadder special on Sky Television sadly felt was necessary.

Concessions to current trappings, which stuck out like a sore thumb at times in Sliding Doors, are also present in Maybe Baby...within the opening two minutes Richardson has rung in sick from work in order to "shag" (and this chapter is called, somewhat crudely, "Screw Me" on the DVD version), while several other scenes include quite fruity language, as they used to call it.

More often than not it's funny enough - and comparatively inoffensive enough - to be excused, and in fairness the film's subject matter is quite explicitly connected to the nuts and bolts of sexual reproduction. All things considered, there are only so many euphemisms to go around, so Elton has done admirably to avoid dragging a poignant and charming narrative into the realms of smut and double-entendre.

While it's quite a high-concept piece - Elton directs movie version of autobiographical novel that tells of a writer risking his marriage by turning his experiences into a film - it's never too smart for its own good. That said, it's never quite as hilarious as it might want you to believe.

Despite another caricatured (but blessedly brief) role for Joanna Lumley, which has the unfortunate effect of raising Mad Cows' spectre momentarily, the casting and writing is much better than it might have been. True, hammy cameos from the likes of Emma Thompson (mildly amusing), Dawn French (ditto) and Rowan Atkinson (surprisingly good) conspire to make Maybe Baby seem little more than another pally get-together for the luvvie crowd, yet the presence of Richardson keeps the whole enterprise on an even keel.

It's not the most radical of female romantic lead roles, but she invests an easy, winning charm and - at key junctures - a depth of near-heartbreaking emotional intensity not necessarily expected in such a film as Maybe Baby. Fluffy on the outside the movie most definitely is, but there's an honesty and truth within the script that comes through on several occasions.

Hugh Laurie is..well, typical Hugh Laurie. Not as gratingly sentimental as he was in Stuart Little (which wasn't completely his fault, I suppose), more competently affable, he has plenty of interaction with others here that produces a series of nicely-judged jokes.

Stealing the show, however, with a brilliantly over-the-top performance, is Tom Hollander as a trendy cutting-edge Scottish auteur. Hired by BBC bosses to direct the film within this film (confused?), he's a brazen parody of the worst aspects of drug culture-obssessed "reality" television and movie-making. As everyone around him fawningly champions the pretentious upstart's slightest whim, Sam is unafraid to call his ideas "crap".

There follows a memorable restaurant exchange between the two men, culminating in this illuminating diatribe from Hollander's vitriolic character - "You said my ideas were shite. I know they were shite, but they're still better than your shite. My shite sh*ts on your shite....". Quite. It's actually hilarious, thanks to Hollander's deliberately rampant over-acting, and destined to be possibly the movie's most-remembered scene.

Also worthy of mention is James Purefoy's seductive actor-cum-potential love interest, Carl Phipps. Playing it (just about) straight, he gives the role the exact amount of smouldering sexiness that's required.

Maybe Baby is a more than respectable heir to the "Brit Rom-Com of the Year" throne, by default (what competition did it have?) or otherwise. Thoroughly enjoyable, mildly mischievous, and accompanied by the obligatory cracking "various artists" soundtrack, this film is far from the disaster factions of the press have claimed it to be.