It’s about the sex-hostility five-years-deferred romance between Selleck’s Peter and Nancy Travis’ Sylvia-now swept off her feet by a snobbish Englishman, who doesn’t like children.Īt the end, someone at this pooped party has a half-bright idea. Oddly, “Three Men and a Little Lady” isn’t even about the relationship between the three men and their little lady (Robin Weisman). With its perfunctory jokes buried in an impeccably bright and lush production, this is the kind of show that can put audiences, and maybe actors, in a daze. The movie’s patina of sophistication makes it seem even sillier. This one takes place in some PG sitcom, high-concept, cloud-cuckoo-land. The first “Three Men” set up a tension between real-life urban sexuality, even in the AIDS era, and the pulls of family life. Even the living arrangements of the Three Stooges or the Three Mesquiteers make more sense. In a lifetime of looking at silly movies, I’ve seen few premises sillier than this. No one is married all amours are conducted outside the house-and the movie. They’ve even moved into a more spacious, homier brownstone. Why would a highly successful Manhattan architect (Selleck), a nationally syndicated cartoonist (Guttenberg) and a failed actor (Danson) all be quartered together in the first place?įive years later, they’re all still housemates: Mom, little lady and the lovable bachelor buddies. If there was a preposterous undercurrent to “Baby” this movie bumbles far past it. But the male writers of “Three Men and a Baby” went further, inviting mother and tot to move in with the threesome. At the end of “Trois Hommes,” she kept them friendly but noncommittal. Coline Serreau, who wrote and directed the original, knew her bachelors. It also had a major flaw, which all but sinks the sequel. A cutesy farce about three swinging Manhattan bachelors-suddenly saddled with an abandoned infant and forced to cope with the daddyhood they’d avoided-it was only a pale echo of the movie from which it was lifted, “Trois Hommes et un Couffin.” The Cesar-winning French farce was really only a pastel murmur itself, but it had a certain symbolic force. “Three Men and a Baby” was like a comic PG rapprochement with the sexual revolution, a pay-back fantasy for post-'60s singles and families alike. Pretty soon, it’s gotten so deadly, everybody is sitting around talking about relationships or cracking smutty jokes-discreetly, so the children won’t be offended. The evening drags on, just like the failed bachelor bash that director Emile Ardolino stages halfway through. It’s obvious what’s on everybody’s mind: They want a hit-by-association. It’s like a posh party where the high-profile guests, Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson, show up, dragging along memories of their joint 1987 hit, “Three Men and a Baby,” but no one figures out anything amusing for them to do. “Three Men and a Little Lady” (citywide) plays less like a comedy than an evening gone wrong.

Three men and a baby movie