Bringing up baby - the manly way
 Jul 9th, 2009
Advantages:
Very funny most of the time
Disadvantages:
Too much time spent dealing with the criminals
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
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Story
Characters / Performances
Special Effects
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  babycougar
About me:
Hi! I'm originally from dooyoo, and it's really nice to see so many familiar faces here :)
I hope...
Member since:27.05.2009
Reviews:29
Members who trust:7
Review rated by 12 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
THREE MEN AND A BABY is a comedy set in New York city, in the mid-1980s. It stars Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Selleck as three thirty-something friends who live together in New York City.
Jack (Ted Danson) is an actor, Peter (Tom Selleck) a successful architect and Michael (Steve Guttenberg) is an artist. The three of them have been enjoying the single life in Manhattan, boasting a very busy social life, and have recently moved in to their newly refurbished apartment.
During the housewarming party, a friend of Jack's asks him for a favour: he would like to have a package for him delivered to Jack's address the next morning, to be picked up a few days later by a someone else.
Jack agrees, but as he departs the next day to shoot a film in Turkey, he passes the responsability on to his two flatmates.
The following morning, Peter and Michael find a baby girl on their doorstep, with a note from one of Jack's ex-girlfriends explaining that it is their baby and that as she cannot cope with caring for her, she is leaving her with him.
Assuming that this is the 'package' Jack was talking about, the two friends are as furious as they are shocked, and they are left having to take care of the baby, knowing nothing about how to do it. They are so consumed with their predicament, that when a neighbour hands them a
small package that came for them, it goes virtually unheeded.
A few days later, when two strangers arrive to pick up their package, as pre-arranged, Michael and Peter hand the baby over to the men.
Only a few instants later, the two friends realise their mistake, and find out also that the real the package contains heroin. Peter manages to run after and get the baby back from the drug dealers, who leave with a can of powdered milk, mistakingly beliving it is where the package has been hidden.
It turns out that Jack knew nothing about either the baby or the drugs, but from then on, they find themselves not only having to care for the baby, but also having to contend with the drug dealers who are still after the drugs, and avoid the detective that is on the case and suspects their involvement.
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Directed by Leonard Nimoy (the pointy eared one out of Star Trek) the film was 1987's most successful, earning multiple awards and grossing over 167 million dollars in the United States alone. It was also a cinematic staple of my childhood, and I have lost count of how many times I watched it back then.
I enjoyed watching the silliness of these clueless men, desperately trying to properly care for a little baby.
Re-watching it now, I think the original film from which it was adapted - the 1985 french hit TROIS HOMMES ET UN COUFFIN - just edges it in hilarity, but it is still a very enjoyable film.
The comedy is of course centered on the three men's apparent unsuitability and unpreparedness for the parental role they are suddenly forced to play.
They are all single men who have been embracing rather enthusiastically the bachelor lifestyle, their personal lives featuring an ever changing cast of women. Of the three, Jack is the biggest womaniser, closely followed by Peter.
Michael, on the other hand, is a more sensitive, romantic type, whose time is often spent befriending girls rather than trying to seduce them.
This state of affairs is made obvious from the start: the film opens with a full length video montage set to the song "Bad Boy", by the Miami Sound Machine (all 4:02 minutes of it), which establishes who they are and the life they are living: Peter involved in the remodeling of the apartment, Michael decorating it, and a succession of women entering and exiting their apartment, not always entirely amicably.
The scenes depicting the men's awkwardness in dealing with the baby are hilarious, particularly the one when Peter goes to the supermarket to buy baby products. Their growing attachment to the baby is also shown very nicely, and in a way that seems natural rather than contrived.
It is a very well executed film, which follows closely the original in which it was based, but it would have been improved if they had spent less time on the criminals' subplot and focused more on the baby-men dynamic where the comedic element is to be found. This is a formula frequently employed in comedy films that seem to be embarrassed to just be an all-out comedy: they have to include an element of seriousness that breaks the flow of the story, but it adds nothing to it and just distracts from the comedy, consuming precious running time that could have been better used creating more comic scenes.
Another negative aspect of the film is the merry-go-round of women in the men's lives, which seems exaggerated and distateful, although this is a reflection of the original french version, in which the men had even made a pact not to allow any one woman to spend more than one night in their house. In any case, this promiscuity has at least provided one sobering moment amidst the frantic progression of events: if you were ever in doubt that 1980s fashion was one long and cruel experiment on the evils of conformity and the brain-washing powers that a dominant culture can have on individual reasoning, just take a look at the clothes and hairstyles those poor women coming in and out of the apartment in the opening scene of the film were wearing. *SHUDDER*
Other than that, this is a very entertaining film, that I would recommend to anyone, and a true classic of its era.
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![Three Men And A Baby [DVD] [1987]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78545434.jpg)
09.07.2009 16:19
Great review - you've made me realise how long it is since I've seen this. (Had no idea it was adapted from another film, either.)
09.07.2009 16:02
good review! Mark
09.07.2009 15:23
Nice work, well written.