Nine Months

An extraordinarily naff concoction from writer/director Columbus, which confirms the near certain perils of remaking French comedies (here Neuf mois, 1994). Grant plays Englishman Sam Faulkner who's happily coupled with Moore's Rebecca - until, that is, she announces she's pregnant. His painful memories of their would-be romantic tryst on the beach being broken up by the noxious kids of the parents-from-hell, car-trader Marty (Arnold) and wife Gail (Cusack), the philosophical counsels of confirmed bachelor Sean (Goldblum, the only vaguely recognisable human in the film), and his fear of trading in his beloved Porsche for a four-wheel drive, push Sam the way of the true cad: off out of it. But, of course, being a Columbus movie, transgression is only a learning curve, here a pretty reactionary one, and smug to boot. When Williams did his turn as an émigré Russian gynaecologist facing his first delivery, I felt a chuckle building. But by the time Grant emotes before the ultrasound scan, my goodwill had been all used up.