She's Having a Baby [Blu-ray]

Director: John Hughes John Hughes

Overview

An aspiring writer faces up to the responsibilities of marriage and family in this romantic comedy from writer, director, and producer John Hughes. Despite the misgivings he pours out to best friend Davis McDonald (Alec Baldwin), Jake Briggs (Kevin Bacon) marries high-school sweetheart Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern). After an abortive attempt at graduate school in New Mexico, the couple settles in suburban Chicago. Jake fakes his way into a job as an advertising copywriter, while Kristy settles into her own corporate job. The couple faces the typical ups and downs of any new marriage, especially after Davis visits with a bimbo on his arm, regaling his pal Jake with tales of the good life. A few years later, Kristy decides to stop taking her birth-control pills -- and tells Jake about it three months later. Plagued by doubts, unfulfilled ambitions, and images of a fantasy girl (Isabel Lorca) he once spotted in a club, Jake resists the idea of fatherhood. Then he finds out he has low sperm count and, his manhood thus challenged, lines up for fertility clinic-assisted stud duty. The birth doesn't go as smoothly as Jake expected, however, setting the stage for climactic realizations. Edie McClurg, who played the nosy school secretary in Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, makes a cameo appearance as an officious neighbor. In addition, a who's who of other Hughes alums and Hollywood stars lend their faces and voices to a series of closing-credits shots in which each suggests a name for the titular baby.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/07/2022
UPC:	0191329220092
Original Release:	1988
Source:	Paramount
Language:	English
Time:	1:45:00
Sales rank:	21,899

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Kevin Bacon	Jake Briggs
Elizabeth McGovern	Kristy Briggs
Alec Baldwin	Davis McDonald
William Windom	Russ Bainbridge
Cathryn Damon	Gayle Bainbridge
Holland Taylor	Sarah Briggs,Girl at Medical Lab
James Ray	Jim Briggs
Isabel Lorca	Fantasy Girl,Fantasy Girl
Gail O'Grady	Laura
Dennis Dugan	Bill
Nancy Lenehan	Cynthia
John Ashton	Ken
Edie McClurg	Lynn
Paul Gleason	Howard
Larry Hankin	Hank
Valeri Breiman	Erin
Bill Erwin	Grandfather
Terrie Snell	Dancer
Reba McKinney	Grandmother
Steve Tannen	Man with Bike
Al Leong	Photographer
Sherry Narens	Nurse at Medical Lab
Kellye Nakahara	Nurse at Hospital
Lisa Niemi	Model
Angela Alvarado	Model
Ingrid Ferrin	Nurse
Lydia Peterkoch	Actor
Cindy Pickett	Suggesting baby names (uncredited)
Kirstie Alley	Actor
Harry Anderson	Actor
Dan Aykroyd	Actor
Matthew Broderick	Actor
John Candy	Actor
Dyan Cannon	Actor
Ted Danson	Actor
Robert Hays	Actor
Michael Keaton	Actor
Joanna Kerns	Actor
Elias Koteas	Actor
Bill Murray	Actor
David Naughton	Actor
Olivia Newton-John	Actor
Bronson Pinchot	Actor
Annie Potts	Actor
John Ratzenberger	Actor
Ally Sheedy	Actor
Wil Wheaton	Actor
Woody Harrelson	Actor
Belinda Carlisle	Actor
Lyman Ward	Actor
Roy Orbison	Actor
Warren Zevon	Actor
Penny Marshall	Actor
Stewart Copeland	Actor,Composer
Nicky Holland	Composer

Technical Credits

John Hughes

John Hughes	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Ronald Colby	Producer,Executive Producer,Producer
James Fierro	Stunts
Stacy Logan	Stunts
Maryann Kelman	Stunts
John D. Miller	Key Grip
Jane Alderman	Casting
Dana A. Bertolette	Stunts
Daniel Maldonado	Stunts
Steve Jacobs	Casting
Rick LeFevour	Stunts
Jane Jenkins	Casting
Janet Hirshenson	Casting
Conrad Palmisano	Stunts
Kay Whipple	Stunts
G.A. Aguilar	Stunts
Michael Hernandez	Stunts
Randy Popplewell	Stunts
Eddie Fernandez	Stunts
Jim Alexander	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Sweet but preachy, this John Hughes suburban yuppie fable tells a familiar story in the director's typical Chicago locale. Fantasy sequences, musical numbers, and sight gags, however, keep the material from seeming too frayed at the edges. Elizabeth McGovern gives a typically tart treatment to a role that's a little more mainstream than much of her output, while Kevin Bacon makes a likable enough everyman as the new husband and expectant father struggling to make peace with his vanishing youth. Fans of edgier material probably won't flock to this sort of picture, but the film's intended audience -- relatively well-adjusted middle-class husbands and wives -- will find a lot to like in the sweet-and-sour treatment of family angst, romantic discontentment, and workday-grind blues. The film's most effective sequence, however, owes more to its soundtrack accompaniment than to its actual content; British singer/songwriter Kate Bush crafted the resonant piano ballad "This Woman's Work" specifically for the film's climax, in which Bacon's character must wait in the maternity ward wings while his wife suffers through a difficult breach birth. The obligatory tacked-on happy ending seems like a letdown after such a powerful piece of music has lent its emotional power to the lightweight material. This is, after all, a reassuring John Hughes movie, choice soundtrack contributions notwithstanding.

All Movie Guide - Brian J. Dillard