frankm@microsoft.UUCP (Frank Maloney) (12/11/90)
THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1990 Frank Maloney
This is the sequel to THREE MEN AND A BABY, which was based on the
French film, THREE MEN AND A CRADLE (TRES HOMMES ET LA COUCHIN(?)).
Like the previous American film, this was one stars Tom Selleck, Steve
Guttenberg, and Ted Danson. And like the previous American film -- both
are Touchstone films, Touchstone being Disney's "adult" division -- it
is an amiable, innocuous charmer, a fantasy in which everyone has all
the money he or she needs but no one has to work very hard.
Unlike the French original, neither American film has any of the
underlayment of grit, human weakness, questions of responsibility, or of
the role of men in the upraising of our children. In other words, the
American film went for the poop and left out the shit.
Fortunately, in the current vehicle, the baby is ready for school
and long past the occasions for the unending and unendurable sight gags
based on infantile incontinence.
Indeed, the given of the film is that three men cannot continue to
be a corporate daddy to one child; the time has come for
conventionalizing the child's family and home situation. The big
question here is who is going to marry the mommy, thus completing the
total sell-out of the original film (TRES HOMMES).
Given the fact that this sequel is as mindless and backboneless as
any major American comedy of the current crop, it is attractive,
pleasant, and easy to take. Tom Selleck shines forth with all his star
power; Danson does some amusing turns in various costumes, and
Guttenberg smiles winningly in the background, but has virtually nothing
to do.
One really nice element is the little lady of the title. She's
pretty, nice, believable, neither health-threateningly saccharine or
preternaturally bratty; she's smart, but not alarmingly so.
I can recommend THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY to anyone needing a
little R & R while Christmas shopping.
--
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney