NINE MONTHS
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
* (out of four)
That's exactly how long the movie felt to me. There weren't even nine laughs in NINE MONTHS. It's a terrible mess of a movie starring a terrible mess of a man, Mr. Hugh Grant, a huge dork. It's not the whole oral-sex/prostitution thing (referring to Grant, not me) that bugs me, it's the fact that Grant is annoying. Not just Adam Sandler-annoying, we're talking Jim Carrey-annoying.
Since when do eye flutters and nervous smiles pass for acting? But, on the other hand, since when do really bad slapstick (a fistfight in the delivery room culminating in Grant's head in Joan Cusack's lap--a scene he paid $60 to have included in the movie) and obscene double entendres (Robin Williams, the obstetrician, tells Grant's pregnant girlfriend she has "a big pussy," referring of course to the size of the cat hairs on her coat, but nonetheless, Grant paid $60 to have the exchange included in the movie) pass for comedy?
NINE MONTHS is a predictable cookie-cutter movie with no originality in humor or plot. Hugh Grant plays a successful child psychiatrist. Why a child psychologist? So the scriptwriters could inject the following unfunny exchange:
KID: My dad's an asshole.
GRANT (flutters eyelashes, offers a nervous smile, then responds in his annoying English accent and I-think-I-actually-have- talent attitude): Could you possibly elaborate on that?
KID: My dad's a _huge_ asshole.
More like a Hugh asshole, but that's beside the point, which is: NINE MONTHS includes too many needlessly stupid jokes that get laughs from the ten year olds in the audience while everyone else shakes his or her head in disbelief.
So, anyway, Grant finds out his girlfriend is pregnant and does his usual reaction (fluttered eyelashes, nervous smiles). This paves the way for every possible pregnancy/child birth gag in the book, especially since Grant's equally annoying friend's wife is also pregnant. The annoying friend is played by Tom Arnold, who provides most of the cacophonous slapstick, none of which is funny, such as a scene where Arnold beats up a costumed "Arnie the Dinosaur" (you draw your own parallels on that one) in a toy store.
The only interesting character in the movie is played by Jeff Goldblum, who should have hid himself away somewhere after the dreadful HIDEAWAY, as an artist with a fear of (and simultaneous longing for) commitment. Not even Robin Williams, who plays a Russian doctor who has recently decided to switch from veterinary medicine to obstetrics, has much humor. His is a one-joke character-- the old foreign-guy-who-mispronounces-English stereotype (did someone say Yakov Smirnov? That's my favorite vodka, by the way), hence the line "Now it's time to take a look at your Volvo," another nasty but unamusing joke, except this one goes right over the ten year olds' heads, while the adults simultaneously groan.
NINE MONTHS is a complete failure, low on laughs and intelligence and high on loud, unfunny slapstick, failed jokes and other uninspired lunacy. Hugh Grant's Sunset Boulevard arrest (please, no caught-with-his-pants-down jokes) may bring more people into the theaters, but they certainly won't leave with a smile on their faces, not after 90 minutes of Grant's nervous smiles. Everything in the movie is so forced, so unauthentic that anyone with an I.Q. over 80 (sorry, Hugh) will know they wasted their money on an unfulfilled desire. But at least they didn't spend 60 bucks for it.
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