JUNIOR
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, Emma Thompson, Frank Langella. Screenplay: Kevin Wade and Chris Conrad. Director: Ivan Reitman.
In 1988, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito and Ivan Reitman set the standard for "high concept" with their comic vehicle TWINS. In Hollywood pitch-meeting parlance, it could be reduced to five words--"Schwarzenegger and DeVito are twins"--and proved that sometimes a simple idea and the right talent could add up to $100 million even with a paper-thin script. JUNIOR goes TWINS one better and two words fewer--"Schwarzenegger is pregnant." And in a limited sense, it works. JUNIOR is so simple and gently directed that the warm performances of Emma Thompson and Schwarzenegger manage to struggle through a script that always goes for the easy gag, and even then can't make most of them particularly funny.
Arnold plays Dr. Alexander Hesse, a fertility researcher at a California university whose project is a drug called Expectane, intended to combat miscarriages. After the FDA rejects a request for human experiments, the project loses its funding and lab space, and appears destined for research limbo. But Hesse's partner Larry Arbogast (Danny DeVito) has other ideas, and more radical ones. He convinces Hesse to test Expectane on himself, fertilizing an ovum stolen from researcher Dianna Reddin (Emma Thompson) and implanting it in Hesse's abdomen. The impregnation is a success, but of course complications ensue. Hesse must hide his condition both from Dianna, with whom he is beginning a romance, and a university official (Frank Langella) who would turn the experiment--Hesse's unborn child--into university property.
This is not Hollywood's first attempt at a pregnant man story, and the disastrous first attempt (the Joan Rivers-directed Billy Crystal vehicle RABBIT TEST) would not seem to inspire eagerness to give the premise another try. The joke in JUNIOR, of course, isn't just that a man is pregnant; it's that the man in question is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger's choices of roles in the last several years have demonstrated a mastery of his own image, as he alternates action blockbusters with against-type comedies, and he has proved remarkably adept at both. As limited as his acting skills may be, he is usually very likable, and JUNIOR is no exception. Hesse changes from a lonely lab hound to a glowing parent-to-be over the course of the film, and Schwarzenegger manages the transition nimbly with the sure-handed assistance of director Ivan Reitman in their third collaboration.
He is also aided by Emma Thompson, who gets a rare opportunity to showcase her background as a standup comic. Those familiar with Thompson only from her Branagh/Shakespeare and Merchant/Ivory efforts will be quite pleasantly surprised by her goofy performance in JUNIOR. Her Dianna, a clumsy and socially inept scientist, is the perfect match for Schwarzenegger's Hesse, and Thompson's delightful moments of physical comedy make her scenes with Arnold very appealing.
That's really what JUNIOR has going for it: appealing performers at their most appealing. Most of the jokes are based on the obvious incongruities of Schwarzenegger in the family way--his appearance in a prosthetic belly; his emotional response to a sappy Kodak commercial; his delivery of lines like, "My nipples are very sensitive." And it's only because Schwarzenegger seems to be having so much fun that any of it works. Other bits, including the obligatory scene of a baby with urine streaming down its leg, are too trite for any amount of good will to make them work. The script, credited to Kevin Wade and Chris Conrad, is full of missed opportunities and silliness instead of any real inventiveness. A subplot involving DeVito's relationship with his pregnant ex-wife really goes nowhere, and seems to be nothing but an excuse to joke about a middle-aged woman having sex with a member of the rock group Aerosmith. Frank Langella, who was so good in the Reitman-directed DAVE last year, is woefully underused as the obligatory villain, and gets the most obvious comeuppance available.
Perhaps that's the word that defines JUNIOR best: obvious. This is terrain we've all seen many, many times before. But the cast of JUNIOR is so engaging that it feels like we're seeing that terrain in a very comfortable car, in the company of old friends.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 months of gestation: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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