Junior – 2 out of 5
If you keep up with my blog and check in regularly with my
reviews (no one does, I’m clearly talking hypothetically here), since the
Christmas season, I’ve been revisiting some of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comedy endeavors
from the 90s. The first one was, fitting
because it was Christmas time, was Jingle All the Way and then later came
Kindergarten Cop. Both of them showed me
that I never truly gave Arnold the respect he deserved with his comedic
performances and realized he was way, way better than I thought he was. Well, I’ve returned for another revisit of
Arnold making with the Ha-Ha’s with Junior.
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Put glasses on them and they are smart. Filmmaking 101. |
After the FDA denies geneticist Dr. Alex Hesse
(Schwarzenegger) and OB/GYN Dr. Larry Arbogast (Danny DeVito) the ability to
test their new drug that promises to help women from having miscarriages, the
two are at an impasse and cannot continue their research. All looks lost but Larry has the crazy idea
to test the drug out on Alex. After
swiping an egg from fellow geneticist; Dr. Diana Reddin (Emma Thompson), Larry
puts the egg in Alex’s body and he begins to take the new drug. They soon learn that their drug is a success
and the fetus survives. With this
information, they can submit their findings and move on but Alex isn’t ready to
give up on this new child and decides he wants to carry it to term.
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Danny DeVito is hilarious but he's a creepy OB/GYN. |
I saw Junior when it first came out because who didn’t want
to see Arnold all preggo? The movie
didn’t leave any impression on me because I don’t ever remember watching it
again in my life. The feature would go
on to have a legacy as a famously bad film.
Re-watching it all these years later, I can kinda see why. The feature has some fleeting moments and has
some elements working in its favor but it’s just not that funny and, honestly,
I found it kinda boring.
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"And here's the kid...Nope, sorry, I'm looking at your bowel." |
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I feel like this whole movie was made just to put Arnold in a dress. |
The movie is essential a dramedy but director Ivan Reitman
just can’t seem to balance both the drama and comedy. There is heart to the film but it too often
feels too sappy. When you have a story
that involves a giant bodybuilder of a man getting pregnant, getting too sappy
kinda hurts the overall product. On the
other side, the film never quite masters the level its humor needs to be at. Mostly the jokes are hacky bits that show
Arnold being too “hormonal” as he’s pregnant and much of it feels like a bad
stand-up act from the 80s. The story
additionally tries to insert comedy by having Emma Thompson’s character as an
accident prone klutzy woman. This is
fine in theory (albeit kinda cliché) but her over-the-top goofball antics
doesn’t mesh with the rest of the humor so it really feels out of place. To put it bluntly, I really didn’t find
anything about this movie funny.
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To Thompson's credit, she's giving her all. It's just the writing that wasn't working. |
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The horror element though was done very well. |
Okay, so it sounds like I hate this film because I didn’t
like the drama or the comedy but I don’t hate it. In fact, there is one thing I really enjoyed about
it: Arnold’s performance. The rest of the cast is doing a great job and
trying to make the story work but, like my other revisits of Arnold’s stuff; I
never realized how great of a performance he is giving. Much like the rest of his career, Arnold
isn’t phoning in anything and really giving his all to the role. Even when it’s awful jokes about women being
overly sensitive and since he’s now pregnant he’s overly sensitive, Arnold is
delivering and making these awful comedic moments a little more bearable. He can’t make them funny (he’s not a miracle
worker) but he brings a charm to the scenes and is doing a tremendous job of
bringing in a very subdued and nuanced performance as this character.
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This movie is 100% scientific accurate. |
Junior might have been a decent, goofball comedy about a man
using an untested fertility drug on himself and then getting pregnant. It’s a premise that, even on paper, feels
like a difficult one to pull off because it can easily go off the rails and
just be silly. There are also hints that this
film could have been a decent dramedy but it’s never quite developed right so
it sorta feels sloppy. Aside from the
performances, the film didn’t really provide me with much entertainment value.
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I'll end this with the fact this movie featured Christopher Meloni...in a time before the internet became obsessed with his butt. |