Ben Elton, he of stand-up rants in the 1980s, spangly jackets and Blackadder, made the latest in a long line of questionable career moves with his decision to direct Maybe Baby, the big screen adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel Inconceivable. If the films title isnt enough of a clue as to the subject matter, then the books should be its about an infertile married couple and the lengths theyll go to to conceive a sprog. What a riot.
Now, having never read the novel, I cant say whether Elton does indeed possess a mine of hilarious anecdotes on the anguish of being unable to have a child but, if he does, his attempts to bring them to the screen can only be described as an abject failure. Quite simply, Maybe Baby just isnt funny.
Aside from the crippling lack of chuckle-worthy material, the film is horribly mis-cast, with Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson for some unfathomable reason deemed suitable for the two lead roles. Laurie, as BBC executive-turned-writer Sam, has always been a likable figure, particularly in his early Fry and Laurie and Blackadder days, but a major question mark continues to hang over his credentials as a proper actor. Richardson, meanwhile, is downright abysmal, delivering every line as if it were scripted in hieroglyphics and she was having to decipher each individual word as and when she read it.
Possibly the worst aspect of the film, though, is the deeply distasteful turn the plot takes as Sam decides to raid his wifes diary and turn her most private (if not particularly insightful) thoughts into a movie screenplay. Perhaps in a drama it would have worked, but in a film otherwise trying to come across as a fairly light middle-class comedy about two basically nice people, it just feels out of place and more than a little nasty.
Maybe Baby may feature a good-looking cast, but its an ugly film, smug in its handling of a sensitive subject and charmless in every department. One to be missed.