As late as the Reagan Era, Hollywood could produce movies in which career women learn the error of their ways and come to appreciate the simple pleasures of Motherhood, giving up the rat race for raising a child and dating the local veterinarian who is also Sam Shepard. Ok then. So why is this film so eye-rollingly insulting to anyone paying attention?
1. Babies can be left to virtual strangers living on the other side of the planet through the simple use of a Last Will and Testament. Diane Keaton's character "inherits" a baby because she's the closest living relative and that's just the way it works so shut up and be glad that this only happens in movies and you don't really have to worry that your distant cousins whom you've never met have assigned children you also haven't met to you. It's not going to happen. I don't think.
2. Super-sharp "Tiger Lady" business woman buys a house totally unseen in a place she's never been and leaves the city to go live in that house without getting it inspected or securing any kind of warranty.
3. Turns out that she's moved into what I wanted to call a Hallmark Channel version of a Vermont town, except that this film predates the first version of the Hallmark Channel by six years. So instead, I'm going to call Baby Boom the inspiration for every Hallmark Channel Vermont Town. Drawling yokel locals, a veterinarian who is also the local doctor, idiot tourists buying everything that has Made In Vermont stamped on it- oh wait, that part is accurate...
4. Diane Keaton's character supposedly made big-time money in New York that allowed her to reside in a massive Manhattan apartment, but in a manner of months after moving to Vermont she's dead broke. How much did she pay for that house where a few thousand dollars in repairs leaves her destitute?
5. Remember how Diane Keaton's character was supposed to be a razor-sharp businesswoman who ran multiple ad campaigns at the same time in NYC? Well, maybe it's the weather or the lack of skyscrapers or something because when she decides she wants to try to sell boiled applesauce labeled "baby food" she goes to the local library to ask for all the material they have on consumer trends and baby boomers, exactly as if she were a single mom with absolutely zero experience in the business world. Why isn't she just putting her education to work? Why is she behaving like she has no idea how to sell a product when that was literally HER JOB back in NYC?
6. This character doesn't need information on consumerism or the spending habits of baby boomers. She needs information concerning health codes and why the Food and Drug Administration tends to frown on the mass production of food products in home kitchens, especially when those kitchens are in homes with unreliable water sources and holes in the roof. Child Protective Services might also be interested in a woman who takes a baby out on a rowboat with neither she nor the baby wearing lifejackets. The local Psych ward might also be interested in talking to her when they realize that she's regularly leaving her baby alone while she takes an obvious plastic doll out on the lake...
7. Ok, exactly how much time passes between this woman inheriting this baby, quitting her job, moving to Vermont, establishing a business, seeing that business become front-page news throughout the nation, and ultimately becoming SO successful that she's offered a ridiculously generous contract by her old employers? It SEEMS to take a while, since she arrives in Vermont in what looks like summertime, survives a winter, and later goes to a dance clearly set in autumn- but that baby doesn't seem to age a single day for the entire length of the film. She can't crawl or stand or talk when we first meet her and there's no evidence she can do any of those things at the end. So what is going on here? Why isn't this baby aging AT ALL? Did Diane Keaton quit her job in NYC on Monday, move to Vermont on Tuesday, break under the strain of modest home repair on Wednesday, start selling apple sauce on Thursday, hit the cover of The Wall Street Journal on Friday and get her huge offer back in NYC the next day? Should I just ignore what appears to be the passage of time presented in a montage and figure that in her case "Overnight Success" is a literal truth?
Siskel and Ebert, may they RIP, gave this film two thumbs-up. They found it funny and engaging and forgave the fact that it's dripping with twee throughout. So did I, when I first saw it. But my ability to suspend my sense of disbelief has faded with age, and there's too much here that is dumb, predictable and, yes, Contrived. Maybe the biggest problem with this film is that it's So Damn 80s I can't just turn my brain off and go with it anymore. I suggest that anyone who wants to revisit this schlock spend a week watching Christmas-themed Hallmark films first in order to smooth out your brain and prepare it for this particular package of predictable pablum.
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