Look Who’s Talking series

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2019) There’s a point when series should just learn to call it quits before exhausting all audience goodwill, and Look Who’s Talking Now is clearly a second step too far for aa series that should have remained a first instalment. This time, the kids are grown-up and the dogs are talking. Kirstie Alley and John Travolta keep having problems, and the whole thing ends at Christmas. What else do you really need to know about the film? Maybe that its last half-hour drags on beyond belief, and that its lone spark of interest comes from a shared dream between the two leads. For fans of the lead actors, Travolta is suitably dashing and Alley looks great on top of some good comedy chops. Alas, the stunt casting of celebrity voices is completely lost in the French-language dub. Still, the use of kids and animals, and cheap seduction theatrics to tempt a character to adultery does smack of B-grade filmmaking—We’re so far down the copying of the original formula that it’s all feeling rote and familiar now. To be fair, Look Who’s Talking Now is about as good (or maybe even slightly better) than the second film—if you’ve toughed it out through the second movie, then you’re ready to tackle the third.

(In French, On TV, August 2019) Sequels shouldn’t aim to deliver exactly the same as the previous film. You want something like it but different (and hopefully better, but let’s not ask too much), otherwise the feeling of déjà vu can overpower the built-in advantage of reprising characters. So it is that Look Who’s Talking Too is so much like the first film (down to the opening credit concept), that it doesn’t have anywhere to go. Romantic comedies should, as a rule, never have sequels and let the characters live happily ever after. Here, the birth of our lead couple’s second child is merely the first salvo in a deteriorating relationship, and there’s nothing funny in seeing them separate even if we know it’ll get better by the end of the film. The babies voiceover thing isn’t as cute as the first film, even if the addition of a second voice can vary things a bit. Overall, the film feels like it’s cruising without much effort: Kirstie Alley and John Travolta make for a fine lead couple, but the film makes a mistake by focusing on them when going after another set of character would have broadened things a bit. Even at barely 90 minutes, Look Who’s Talking Too causes restlessness more than anything, which is not the kind of thing you’re aiming for in a sequel.

(In French, On TV, June 2019) You know the shtick for Look Who’s Talking—everyone does: Standard romantic comedy, except with the baby character having a voice. It’s good for a few laughs (“Lunch!” is always good for a smirk or two), but there’s a limit to how long that gimmick can be sustained, after which the film has to rely on more standard elements. Fortunately, there’s John Travolta and Kirstie Alley looking great and being decently funny in their roles. Perhaps the biggest surprise of Look Who’s Talking is that the humour is considerably cruder than I expected, starting from a conception credit sequence that also introduces the gimmick. At times too cute but generally funny, there’s a bit more to this film than the talking-baby thing, including a rather complicated relationship between the two leads that goes a bit beyond the strict minimum expected. One sequence has a cute nod to Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, except that it’s more than a gag—it cleverly reinforces the father/son association between Travolta’s character and the baby in the viewers’ minds by making a call-back to the actor’s previous role. But that’s getting over-analytical on a movie that’s not built to sustain more than a casual viewing. Look Who’s Talking may be a bit too quirky to love entirely, but it has its charm.