She's Having a Baby Reviews

Teenage angst specialist John Hughes's first foray into the adult universe, SHE'S HAVING A BABY revolves around sullen young Jefferson "Jake" Briggs (Kevin Bacon), a would-be writer who passively blunders into every important decision of his life. Minutes before his wedding ceremony, Jake worries that he is making a mistake. But the wedding goes on as scheduled, and Jake eventually falls into a lucrative position as an advertising copywriter in Chicago. While now outwardly successful, he is bored with his job and alienated from his neighbors and spends much of his time fantasizing about other women. After his wife, Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern), gets pregnant, Jake is finally snapped out of his disaffected fog when she goes into an extremely difficult and dangerous labor. SHE'S HAVING A BABY could have been a fascinating and funny look at the conflict between marriage and personal ambition had its writer-director probed more deeply into the subject. Hughes instead falls back on the easy jokes, hip music, and superficial character studies that have obscured the basic viability of all his work.