JUNIOR
A film review by George V. Reilly
Copyright 1994 George V. Reilly
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny De Vito, Emma Thompson, Frank Langella, and Pamela Reed. Directed by Ivan Reitman.
Perfunctory is the word that sums up JUNIOR for me. It's a by-the-numbers exercise in movie-making, and never inspires much more than an occasional chuckle.
It must have been easy to position this as a high-concept movie: Schwarzenegger Gets Pregnant. The concept is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. With a more imaginative and subtler script it might have been quite a good film. But JUNIOR shows little imagination: stock characters doing stereotypical things in a role-reversal.
Schwarzenegger is a dour Austrian fertility researcher. De Vito is his partner, playing yet another character who's sneaky and greedy; this time he's a good guy. When their experimental fertility drug is axed by the FDA, they decide in desperation to conduct their first human trial on a man: Schwarzenegger. The trial is supposed to run for only three months, but Schwarzenegger, by now volatile with hormone-induced mood swings, decides to carry the baby to term---without telling De Vito.
De Vito eventually realizes what has happened, of course. In time, so too do Frank Langella, the villain who first shut down their project, Emma Thompson, the clumsy researcher who is falling in love with Schwarzenegger, and Pamela Reed, De Vito's pregnant ex-wife.
Of the cast, only Thompson manages to rise much beyond the limitations of the material, being both very funny and endearing as the perennially cack-handed love interest.
Wait for this to show up on video.
-- /George V. Reilly
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