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‘Babyfever’
By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
June 06, 1994
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Most guys run for their lives when women start commiserating about their innards, but in the touchy-feely "Babyfever," Henry Jaglom grabs a camera and captures their every neurotic whimper. Like "Eating," the director's 1991 film about women and food, "Babyfever" is essentially a high-toned hen party with a frill of a plot and a surfeit of mewling.Victoria Foyt, Jaglom's wife, co-writer and mother of their new daughter, also stars in this labor of love. The new parents must have thought their experience too special for mere baby announcements. Foyt brings a gawky earnestness to the role of Gena, a fawnlike yuppie torn between two men -- safe "suit" (Matt Salinger) and smug actor (Eric Roberts) -- each of whom wants her to sit on his nest. In this movie it's men whose alarms are going off. Positively ditherous, Gena seeks advice from her many annoying friends at her secretary's baby shower. To a woman, they are obsessed with their reproductive systems and making creative use of them. The conversation revolves around their biological clocks, their ovaries, their tubes, their wombs and the excretions of same, ad nauseam. They do, however, pause from time to time to oooh over the shower gifts (postpartum teddies, teddy bears, baby clothes and a breast pump) and to pet the expectant mommy's tummy. They also hug a lot and sing several verses of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to the helpless fetus. Gena, who thinks she too may be expecting, has been making frequent phone calls to her doctor's office for test results. When she finally joins the group, she takes a seat between the guest of honor and another hugely pregnant friend. "I feel like I'm hooked up to a sperm machine," says Gena. (A sperm machine?) Jaglom needlessly complicates this twaddle with a subplot involving the hostess's husband, who is about to sell the house out from under his wife to pay back taxes. She realizes something's wrong when she discovers that he has been selling paintings right off the wall. Though quite upset, she goes on about her duties as a hostess, and that's the end of that. And the caring and sharing go on. Gena and her friends are largely a selfish bunch who want children for all the wrong reasons. They're the same reasons, really, that drove Jaglom to make this and all his other movies -- egomania and a relentless need for attention. He's the world's most irritating filmmaker, and "Babyfever" makes you want to cross your legs. "Babyfever" is rated R for sexual content and baby talk.
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