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She's Having a Baby (1988)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 7/21

SheHaveBab
7/21: She's Having a Baby is one of the worst John Hughes pictures ever.

I thought I had seen them all, but somehow, this one escaped my attention. Needless to say, it was a major box-office stinker in 1988, grossing $16 million against a budget of $20 million. Right after that, Hughes went back to his tried-and-true formula by doing another John Candy movie entitled Uncle Buck which takes place in Chicago for the umpteenth time.

Well, it's easy to pinpoint where it went wrong, and that's the zero chemistry between Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern. Once it happened, She's Having a Baby was pretty much DOA. My intelligence got insulted when Kevin Bacon's character started to think about the positive times he had with his wife while she was at death's door. John Hughes implemented the same flashback technique for Steve Martin in Planes, Trains & Automobiles which was done so much better.

What I don't like is the randomness of one scene to another. Wont to John Hughes' trademark style, I thought the film was a comedy, but it turned out to be a serious drama. True Love with Annabella Sciorra and Ron Eldard had a similar theme except it stopped right after the wedding yet made a good point about being trapped by the reality of marriage which was something that their characters didn't think too much about.

Let's be real: Elizabeth McGovern isn't an actress but a porcelain doll with pretty blue eyes. No wonder why her career died after the 80's. She doesn't do any favors for Kevin Bacon who's constantly out of place. His character's daydreams are annoying, and so are the overbearing music and the neighbor crap.

Not showing up much, Alec Baldwin steals the show with his truth talk. Besides him, do Jake and Kristy have any more friends? And neither has siblings given how much time their families have spent harping on having children? Years pass, and Jake and Kristy still look the same while coming off as strangers to each other. It's all bizarre to me.

All in all, She's Having a Baby can be summed up as follows: boy and girl get married, don't know each other and probably never will, and have a baby, and...the end.