Baby Boom

Baby Boom casts Diane Keaton as J.C. Wiatt, a high-powered executive whose entire life is thrown into turmoil after she inherits a small child from a deceased relative. There is, for the most part, exceedingly little within Baby Boom to get interested in or excited about, as director Charles Shyer, along with coscripter Nancy Meyers, has infused the film with as standard and run-of-the-mill a vibe as one could possibly envision. The pervasively stale atmosphere is compounded by a lackadaisical pace that never manages to accumulate any real momentum, with the movie’s ongoing emphasis on less-than-fresh sequences and interludes (eg there’s even a montage of J.C. auditioning various babysitters!) lending it the feel of a garden-variety sitcom. (It’s not surprising to learn that the film was indeed adapted into a short-lived sitcom shortly after its release, certainly.) Keaton’s typically appealing performance ensures that Baby Boom is, at the very least, watchable from start to finish, although it’s clear that Keaton’s lack of chemistry with love interest Sam Shepard remains just another ineffective element within the proceedings. The proverbial nail-in-the-coffin is the movie’s almost total dearth of laughs, which does, in the end, confirm Baby Boom‘s place as a wholeheartedly underwhelming bit of ’80s nostalgia.

** out of ****