Baby Boom (1987)

(On Cable TV, June 2019) It’s a good thing I watched Baby Boom until the end before settling upon some kind of opinion, because if the credits had rolled after its first act, I would have been several shades of livid. I quite dislike the initial half-hour of the film, as a high-powered businesswoman somehow ends up with a baby. Gracelessly tackling real issues confronting career women juggling motherhood with their professional aspirations, Baby Boom, seen from thirty years later, fumbles the ball: it strings along dumb gags, revels in dated stereotypes, showcases nonsensical episodes, treats its characters like idiots and gives the impression of trivializing an important topic that still matters today. By the time our character cracks up and leaves Manhattan for rural Vermont, I was ready to light the film on fire. But it gets better. As our protagonist (Diane Keaton, increasingly sympathetic) grapples with life in the country and then her improbable comeback to the boardroom, the film acquires the complexity and sympathy that the first third fails to create. I still don’t quite like Baby Boom all that much, but I don’t dislike it quite as much as I did at the end of the first act. With a reaction so idiosyncratic, I suppose that everyone else’s mileage will vary.