Look Who’s Talking

Amy Heckerling wrote and directed this romantic fantasy-comedy about an unwed pregnant woman of 35 (Kirstie Alley) who goes looking for an ideal father for her baby, which has ideas about the matter as well as an offscreen voice of its own (supplied by Bruce Willis). Heckerling still has some of the sensitivity she showed in handling actors in Fast Times at Ridgemont HighAlley, George Segal (as the selfish and adulterous father of the baby), John Travolta (as a boyish cabdriver, baby-sitter, and suitor), Olympia Dukakis (as the heroine’s mother), and Abe Vigoda (as Travolta’s grandfather) are all used well hereand she has a deft way of illustrating her heroine’s fantasies about possible mates without any fuss. But at the core of this movie, and providing the apparent reason for its immense popularity, is the smart-alecky baby-babble provided by Willis, which seems to prove that infantile male desirebeginning at the sperm level and continuing unabatedis still basically calling all the shots (1989). (JR)

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