Bringing Up Babies

As with football, music and Christmas, childbirth has always been a tricky subject for filmmakers to tackle. The temptation to fall into cheap sentimentality while avoiding the sticky (literally) matter of childbirth itself has always been a problem. For every Raising Arizone, there's been a Nine Months; for every Snapper, there's been a Junior and for every Three Men and a Baby, there's been a, em, Three Men and a Little Lady. In the last couple of weeks there's been two films released that deal with the topic of unwanted or unexpected pregnancy. The first one, Waitress, tells the story of, wait for it, a beautiful, smalltown waitress in a pie restaurant who finds herself pregnant at the hands (and other appendages) of her abusive, deadbeat husband. The other new release, Knocked Up, concerns a beautiful tv presenter who finds herself pregnant after a drunken one night stand with a chunky, stoner, deadbeat Canadian. What is it with these smart, beautiful women and deadbeats? And where can I find one?

While not belonging in the same category as rubbish like Nine Months or Look Who's Talking, Waitress doesn't offer anything particularly new or interesting. Or good. Our heroine, Jenna, played with just the right amount of sweetness and toughness by Keri Russell didn't plan and doesn't want her baby. Instead she's been planning on running away from her husband to make pies somewhere else but now she's got this darned baby (one in the oven, oh-ho!) to deal with. Jenna starts to have an affair with her married gynacologist but that's ok because her husband hits her and the doctor is cute. Anyway, she makes lots of pies and writes letters to her unborn child and I guess she learns what's important and stuff. She has friends in the diner and they're on their own life journey too. Oh yes. One of them is also having an affair with her married boss. Whose wife is their friend. Jesus, with friends like these..

It's been hard to read a review of Waitress that hasn't summed it up by using an easy food reference. As sweet as apple pie, as cheesy as, a really cheesy pie, etc etc. So here's mine: Waitress is like a dessert you shouldn't have ordered after dinner. You think you want it, you've seen other people around you having it and they seemed to love it but halfway through, the combination of sweetness and stodginess just becomes too much and you wish someone will take it away before you have to run to the men's room.

Ah - maybe that's a bit too harsh. Look, it's rubbish but perfectly nice, watchable, forgettable rubbish. It's written and directed by Adrienne Shelley who died tragically last year. She was a great actress and there's just about enough here to suggest that she might have produced something good in the future. But Waitress isn't it.


Knocked Up, on the other hand, is another great comedy from the people resonsible for 'The 40 year old Virgin'. Surprisingly for a couple of films that seem to be targeted at fans of gross-out comedies like American Pie and There's Something About Mary, these films show a sensitivy and awareness that are at odds with the way the films are advertised in their trailers. The story is nothing special - beautful woman has one night stand, 8 weeks later she realises she's pregnant, she gets in touch with slacker dude who, after a reaction that he describes as 'unfavourable' realises that he nedds to straighten up and take some responsibility for his actions. There's lots of bumps in the road and hey - lots of laughs too but it's really quite sweet. Apart from the drugs, the lapdancers and slacker dude's moron buddies. And the actual childbirth itself is really well done. It's funny, educational (I knew nothing about crowning or the bloody show before today) and well worth catching.

Some people are having a go at it for its conservative slant (abortion is never an issue here and both couples in the film face up to their responsibilities and are commited to each other) but doesn't every romantic comedy aim for the same thing? Isn't it the plan for these people to get together at the end and not fall apart. Seems a bit odd to criticise a film for follwoing time honoured convention. There's a reason When Harry Met Sally leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy at the end and Annie Hall leaves you feeling sad and melancholic (and smugly intellectual too, if truth be told) and that's because Harry gets the girl and Woody doesn't.

The cast are terrific, Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen are great as the odd couple and Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann do more than enough with fairly thankless roles as the sister and husband of the expectant mother. It's over 2 hours long which is ridiculous for a comedy (Harry & Sally and Annie Hall are both under 90 minutes with no fat) but it doesn't feel like it's that long so that's a good thing. There's a bit too much unnecessary padding though - do we need to see American Idol's Ryan Seacrest complainng about the vacuous nature of modern celebrities (irony, what?) or the sister character berating the doorman of a nightclub for refusing to let her in? There's a lot of that sort of stuff to distract us from the only people in the film that we really care about. Still, when it comes back to Katherine and Seth (sorry - I can't remember the character's names. I think his was dude) there's more than enough there to warm the coldest of hearts. Ignore the off-putting trailers and posters - give it a chance.