#40 Baby Boom

Baby Boom (1987)

directed by Charles Shyer

written by Nancy Meyers

Charles Shyer

We almost didn't finish watching this. The score by Bill Conti and the first half of the movie, written by Nancy Myers, is not really good. It was only when we started talking about how much we disliked what we watched that we both remembered sort of liking the second half. So we went back and found it adequate.

It's a nice snapshot of a certain period in time as women were moving up in the corporate world and seemingly faced the choice of career or motherhood, but not both. The great solution of the movie is the answer it posits; why not both, and what would that look like?

For those who can't recall the film, Diane Keaton is a sharp, successful executive who, right after she's put up for a partnership with a warning it'll mean not having a family, finds herself saddled with a baby. Suddenly she turns into a scatterbrained, harried mess and quickly finds herself outmaneuvered by her younger, male assistant (James Spader) and pushed out of the firm.

That leads to the main problem with Baby Boom. There's some good, serious stuff about women and men in business, and Keaton, someone I don't particularly find convincing as anything often, is totally on target here. Then the movie shifts to moments of cheesy low comedy - the interviews with nannies, baby shenanigans - and they don't work alongside the more serious moments. There's a dissonance in the movie that keeps it from ever achieving a coherent tone.

Once pushed out of the corporation, Keaton and baby move to a dilapidated farm in Vermont where she finds empowerment, success, and love. It's not as cheesy as that sounds, and its mix of fish-out-water and Hallmark-style love story with Sam Shepard as the local veterinarian, it's pleasantly charming. It's a minor movie, but it's got adequate heart, overall fun performances from Keaton and Shepard, and, even though it never feels like more than a decent tv movie, it's a fine snapshot of a certain time and place that's already fading into the past.

verdict: keeping it for now, but I'm not sure we'll actually ever go back to it, but it's in a slim case, so it doesn't take up much shelf space

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