Maybe Baby
UK/France 1999
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
London, the present. Sam Bell, a commissioning editor at the BBC, and his wife Lucy, a theatrical agent, are happily married. Despite frequent efforts, they remain childless. Sam is under pressure at work from Nigel, the new controller, who's furious that Sam turned down a proposed series from young Scots director Ewan Proclaimer. Lucy becomes attracted to her agency's latest client, actor Carl Phipps.
Sam and Lucy's infertility begins to put a strain on the marriage, so they decide to try IVF. Sam is demoted to children's daytime television. Without telling Lucy, he starts writing a comedy script based on their fertility problems. His colleagues suggest it needs a more feminine angle. Sam secretly lifts passages from Lucy's private diary. The film gets the go-ahead, with Ewan Proclaimer directing.
Two of Lucy's eggs are fertilised, but she aborts. Finding out about the film, she walks out on Sam and starts an affair with Carl. The film is a hit. Meeting Sam again some months later, Lucy tells him the affair is over and she's pregnant by Carl. Sam offers to accept the child as his own and they get back together. The pregnancy proves illusory; they resolve to keep trying.
Review
Given the plot, it was perhaps inevitable that a certain air of smugness should settle over Maybe Baby, Ben Elton's directorial debut - especially during the scenes where people assure the hero Sam what a great film script he's written. Since Sam has pinched almost every word of it from real life, he can look suitably modest. But of course Sam's 'real' life, including his wife's diary from which he's been filching extracts, is all written by Elton. So what we're getting is various Elton characters repeatedly telling each other what a brilliant screenwriter Elton is. Under the circumstances a note of complacency, not to say self-satisfaction, could hardly be avoided.
True, given Elton's own personal experience of both BBC and IVF, this is all very self-referential, if not postmodern. Or would be, were it not for the fact that Maybe Baby remains defiantly old-fashioned throughout. Delete some of the more explicit language, and we could be watching a remake of one of those classic Hollywood 30s marital comedies starring, say, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Even the casting carries the same audience-friendly guarantee of a happy ending. Nothing very bad, we can feel sure, is going to happen to a couple played by Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson.
Within these reassuringly familiar parameters, Elton mostly delivers the goods. Maybe Baby can't quite do poignant, though it tries ("Sad jokes are the best jokes" reflects Sam), but otherwise it pushes most of the right buttons. There are some funny lines, one of the best being Sam's attempt to outbid another harassed guy for a taxi: "I've got a very important meeting," he's told, to which he replies "I've got some sperm up my arse and it's dying." A few of the supporting cameos misfire: Emma Thompson goes way over the top as a ditzy New Ager and Joanna Lumley is wasted as Lucy's lesbian boss. But Tom Hollander enjoys himself as an aggressive Scots wunderkind (shades of Irvine Welsh, perhaps?) planning a comedy series about "a bunch of ordinary kids, all heroin addicts of course, injecting smack into their eyeballs."
The film's satirical thrust is intermittent, and rarely draws too much blood. The BBC, who co-funded the film, comes in for a few nibbling-the-hand-that-feeds-you digs: the producer of an inane Teletubbies-style kids' programme muses "I'm not quite happy with the Furblob family perpetrating an exclusively heterosexual lifestyle," and Sam finds himself presiding over a focus group of bored four-year-olds. Otherwise the jibes are aimed at well-worn targets like nouvelle cuisine restaurants (do they still exist?) or pompous medics (Rowan Atkinson in habitual orotund mode). Maybe Baby's besetting desire to be liked is typified by the odd change that comes over Hollander's character, the Scots film-maker Ewan Proclaimer. Starting out as an abrasive, mouthy individual, loudly contemptuous of soft English middle-class values, he ends up directing an innocuous and very English middle-class comedy. Rather like - come to think of it - Ben Elton.
Credits
- Director
- Ben Elton
- Producer
- Phil McIntyre
- Screenplay
- Ben Elton
- Based on his novel Inconceivable
- Director of Photography
- Roger Lanser
- Editor
- Peter Hollywood
- Production Designer
- Jim Clay
- Music/Orchestrations
- Colin Towns
- ©Inconceivable Films Ltd/Pandora Investment S.A.R.L.
- Production Companies
- Pandora and BBC Films present a Phil McIntyre production
- Executive Producers
- Ernst Goldschmidt
- David M. Thompson
- Line Producer
- Mary Richards
- Associate Producer
- Lucy Ansbro
- Production Executives
- Pandora:
- Diana Costes Brook
- BBC:
- Jane Hawley
- Production Co-ordinator
- Karen McLuskey
- Location Manager
- David Pinnington
- Post-production
- Supervisor:
- Maria Walker
- Co-ordinators:
- Candice De Clerck
- Fleur Fontaine
- Assistant Directors
- Richard Whelan
- Sara Desmond
- Vicky Marks
- Additional:
- Fiona Richards
- Sue Wood
- Script Supervisor
- Anna Worley
- Casting
- Director:
- Mary Selway
- ADR Voice:
- Louis Elman
- Wescam Operator
- Mike Parker
- Steadicam Operators
- Alf Tramontin
- Keith Sewell
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- Antony Hunt
- Digital Supervisor
- Dan Pettipher
- Digital Artists
- Evan Davies
- Richard Little
- Helen Ball
- Visual Effects
- Mill Film
- Special Effects
- Effects Associates Ltd
- Associate Editor
- Keith Mason
- Art Director
- Chris Seagers
- Set Decorator
- Maggie Gray
- Costume Designer
- Anna Sheppard
- Wardrobe Mistress
- Georgina Gunner
- Make-up/Hair Designer
- Elizabeth Tagg
- Make-up/Hair
- Artists:
- Joceline Andrews
- Tamsin Dorling
- Additional Artists:
- Sally Collins
- Julie Dartnell
- Renata Gilbert
- Kelly Marazzi
- Juta Russell
- Janine Schneider
- Title Design
- Chris Allies
- Music Supervisors
- Paul Roberts
- Jules Bain
- Paul McDonald
- Ann Murray
- Virgin Records Ltd
- Soundtrack
- "Maybe Baby" - Paul McCartney; "Unforgivable Sinner" - Lene Marlin; "Kelly Watch the Stars" - Air; "Comedy" - Shack; "Cradle" - Atomic Kitten; "Do the Strand" - Roxy Music; "Pump It Up" - Elvis Costello & The Attractions; "I Can't Make You Love Me" - George Michael; "I Don't Wanna Fight" - Westlife; "Chorus 2000 (Great-Casher mix)" - Gold 'N' Delicious; "She Does (12" Edit)" - Quivver; "All I Need" - Tin Tin Out; "Sperm Test in the Morning"
- Sound Recordist
- John Hayes
- Re-recording Mixers
- Mike Dowson
- Mark Taylor
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Colin Miller
- Dialogue Editor
- Stefan Henrix
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Ed Colyer
- Editor:
- Paul Conway
- Foley
- Artists:
- Andie Derrick
- Jason Swanscott
- Mixer:
- Ed Colyer
- Editor:
- Jacques Leroide
- Medical Adviser
- Carlton Jarvis
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Nick Powell
- Animals
- Dean Aris
- Melanie Aris
- Olive Tate
- Helicopter Pilot
- Leon Smith
- Cast
- Hugh Laurie
- Sam Bell
- Joely Richardson
- Lucy Bell
- Adrian Lester
- George
- James Purefoy
- Carl Phipps
- Tom Hollander
- Ewan Proclaimer
- Joanna Lumley
- Sheila
- Rowan Atkinson
- Mr James
- Dawn French
- Charlene
- Emma Thompson
- Druscilla
- Rachael Stirling
- Joanna
- Matthew MacFadyen
- Nigel
- Kelly Reilly
- Nimnh
- Stephen Simms
- Trevor
- Yasmin Bannerman
- Melinda
- Dave Thompson
- Dave the comedian
- John Brenner
- Kit
- Jaz Wilson
- Baby Cuthbert
- Guy Barrett
- Della Bhujoo
- Abbey Careford
- Marina Fiorato
- Nigel's posse
- Richard Leaf
- Justin Cocker
- Lidija Zovkic
- Petra
- Connor Pearce
- boy on bike in park
- Henrietta Garden
- mother in park
- Richard Sandells
- man wrestling for cab
- Emma Cooke
- Shelley Conn
- nurses
- Stephanie Bartczak
- Chris Belgrave
- Catriona Pearson
- Judith Shekoni
- Ewan's posse
- Paul Ready
- student doctor
- Paul Tripp
- Mr Furblob
- Dave Thompson
- Mrs Furblob
- Gemma Aston
- Roz
- Lisa Palfrey
- Jan
- Serena Evans
- Doctor Cooper
- Katisha Kenyon
- Anneli Harrison
- Caroline Hayes
- commercial girls
- Elizabeth Woodcock
- Tilda
- John Lightbody
- hospital administrator
- Mina Anwar
- Yasmin
- Junix Inocian
- chinese practitioner
- John Fortune
- acupuncturist
- Sally Reeve
- masseuse
- Emma Buckley
- IVF surgeon
- Karen Bryson
- actor playing doctor
- Bill & Ben
- William the dog
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Redbus Film Distribution
- 9,428 feet
- 104 minutes 46 seconds
- Dolby SRD
- Colour by
- DeLuxe