JUNIOR
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: High concept: Arnold Schwarzenegger is
pregnant. In-depth analysis: Arnold Schwarzenegger
is pregnant. This gives us a chance to see
dramatized all the cliches about pregnancy, but
with Arnold as the central figure. This film might
have been amusing as a five-minute comedy sketch.
Unfortunately, it has another 104 unnecessary
minutes. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4)
Ivan Reitman has a spotty background directing comedies. Films like MEATBALLS, TWINS, and GHOSTBUSTERS I and II have had good gags but have been rather thin on story. DAVE seemed to indicate Reitman was starting to get a feel for plotting and characters. It must have been a fluke, however, since he is back to featherweight comedies with under-developed characters in JUNIOR. Once you know that the idea is to show Schwarzenegger going though the same physical changes that pregnant women go through, you can probably think of more amusing scene possibilities than you will actually see in this film.
Dr. Alexander Hesse is an incredibly well-built scientist with an Austrian accent and an aversion to babies. Ironically, he is working on Expectane, a drug to improve the safety of pregnancies. When the FDA decides that the drug needs more testing, Hesse's fast-talking partner Dr. Larry Arbogast (Danny DeVito), thinks that human testing will be more convincing. Arbogast talks Hesse into a surgical implantation of an egg, but only for the first three months. Meanwhile the university has evicted the two scientists from their lab space and has replaced them with Dr. Diana Reddin (Emma Thompson), a winning but rather awkward scientist. Her research unwittingly provides Hesse and Arbogast with some of the materials they need for their experiment, and the first male pregnancy is initiated.
It must have seemed like a comic natural to have the super- masculine Schwarzenegger in a role with cross-gender implications, but it is a real mistake. Gender-crossing films like TOOTSIE and MRS. DOUBTFIRE have been big successes for other stars, but Schwarzenegger simply does not project personality the way that a Dustin Hoffman or a Robin Williams does. And Reitman intentionally tones down Schwarzenegger's personality so that later in the film he can appear to be more "humanized" by the experience. The problem is that it takes all of Schwarzenegger's strength to project any personality at all and later it is hard to work up much interest in the character even in his unusual predicament. In TOOTSIE, look how well- defined a character Hoffman creates even before any of the cross-gender material. Besides, Schwarzenegger already bulges oddly and making him pregnant almost seems redundant. Actually part of the pleasure of such a film would be to see how a man struggles with the fatigue of carrying the additional weight. This makes an Austrian body-builder perhaps less appropriate than many other actors would have been. It is not clear why Danny DeVito is in this film since he is not at all credible as a scientist and his comic potential is all but ignored. It may well be that the film is trying to play off Reitman's previous success in TWINS. Similarly, Frank Langella is around to play a shady university executive in a story that didn't seem to need a villain. But he was good in DAVE so Reitman seems to want to use what has worked before.
It was obviously assumed that the situation would be so funny that the writing seems to have been done on autopilot. This is a film without any well-developed character in anything but the physical sense. It returns again and again to common scenes of pregnancy whose only humor value is that you are seeing a man going through the changes. Once you have seen Arnold complaining that his nipples are getting sensitive and crying at soap operas, is it still supposed to be funny to see him eating pickles and ice cream, or is that really justa variation on the same gag? I picture writers Kevin Wade and Chris Conrad just making a checklist of pregnancy cliches and writing a scene for each. Time and again opportunities for a funnier and more believable script are passed up for cheap gags. At this stage of development the drug would not have been given a suggestive trade name like "Expectane," it would be called something like "Themoxodil." To pick up the pacing, the film throws in slapstick humor, mostly built around Thompson's clumsiness. But the slapstick isn't funny and it sabotages her effort to make her character believable. Her body language is the best thing about this film, but the slapstick is misplaced and even she cannot make it work.
This is a cookie-cutter formula comedy that drags on what might have worked as a short skit far too long. Rate it a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
.
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