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The life of the film critic is an interesting one. Every one envies you (that's good), pleads for free tickets (no, I'm not allowed to take a guest), and wants to discuss the latest movies (oh, you liked Return of the King? you don't say). But back to that envy thing, I always have to remind friends that I see 250 movies a year, and at least 40% of them are a waste of time. That's a bad movie every 3-4 days.

Things are especially grim in January. Since the weather is so terrible in much of the country and since folk are still catching up with all the holiday movies, Hollywood rightly believes that any new movie doesn't stand a chance. So the studios save the winter months to release movies even they think are terrible. And if Hollywood doesn't like something, you know it's pretty bad.

But that didn't prepare me for what happened last week. A screening had been set up for My Baby's Daddy, the new comedy starring Anthony Anderson and Eddie Griffin. It was an evening screening, where the press would see the movie along with a bunch of people who won tickets from a radio station. Studios like the press to see a movie with "normal" people when they think we won't like it. They assume (with some reason) that we'll be provoked to laughter by the presence of other, less jaded moviegoers. But then at the last minute, we were sent an email that said the press would not be allowed into the screening. Not allowed! Forbidden! How bad does a movie have to be for them to want to exclude the press? I mean, they even let us into Cat in the Hat (the new floor for film critics looking to judge levels of badness). So, when I headed out on Friday to see the movie for myself, I was expecting a catastrophe.

It turns out My Baby's Daddy isn't horrible. True, you have the cliched set-up of three youngish men who suddenly become fathers all at once. Will they leave their player-ish ways or will they own up to their responsibilities? And you have the obligatory Lamaze class and diaper-changing sequences. But you also have some genuine characters. Lonnie (Eddie Griffin), G (Anthony Anderson), and Dominic (Michael Imperioli) feel like guys who grew up together. They have their dreams--G wants to be a boxer, Dominic is managing a rap duo--but you can tell those dreams probably aren't going anywhere soon. Their girlfriends are also real people. G is dating an Asian-American woman who works at her father's store, while Dominic's "girlfriend" is actually just a co-worker with whom he had a one-night stand. Oh wait, Lonnie's girlfriend is an embarrassing caricature of a gold digger. Yeah, that's not so good.

The main problem with My Baby's Daddy is this inconsistency of tone. One second it's a reflective comedy about relationships, and the next moment a baby is peeing on someone's face. The same is true for the characters as well. A straight-laced Asian immigrant father is suddenly seen lighting up a joint and pouring out malt liquor on the ground for his "homies." I'm sure someone thought that was hilarious, but no one in my theater did. You get the sense that the movie started out as a somewhat sensitive, if predictable, romantic comedy, but then it didn't test well in focus groups. More jokes, they yelled. More laughs, they demanded. Give us more farting!

Still, there are enough interesting scenes that the movie doesn't sink to Cat in the Hat status. I always like Anthony Anderson, and his combination of charm and funny faces still works for me. Eddie Griffin isn't as annoying as usual, in part because he's playing the nerdy straight man. And Michael Imperioli isn't stuck with the token white guy role that I expected. In fact, the racial dynamics are a point in the movie's favor. Though the movie starts out aggressively pc--oh look, there's the Asian girlfriend and the Hispanic girlfriend and the lesbian girlfriend--it settles down and handles the issue nicely. Yes, the movie makes fun of Asian names (one little boy is called Ding-a-ling), but it largely avoids that kind of stereotyping and instead treats people as people. There's no hysteria over the fact that Anthony Anderson's character is dating someone who isn't black. It's shown as a normal course of events.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not encouraging you to go out and see this one. But for a movie that I thought was going to stink, I was pleasantly surprised. You can go back to envying me now.  

J. Robert Parks  1/17/2004