More screwball fantasy than stirring feminist statement—at least when it comes to the question of women balancing work and motherhood in the 1980s—Baby Boom stars Diane Keaton as NYC management consultant J.C. Wiatt, whose fast track to partnership runs into a speed bump when she unexpectedly inherits a toddler. Baby Boom is written by Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers and directed by Shyer, but it’s Keaton who keeps it afloat: slyly spitting out business-speak as if it was repartee from her Woody Allen days, as well as working deft physical comedy into nearly every scene (especially, hilariously, her initial rejection of the child at the airport). Keaton’s comic touch overcomes the movie’s increasingly ludicrous scenarios, from the ways the baby disrupts J.C.’s corporate life to just about everything that happens after she moves to Vermont. (There’s a pointless money-pit section that’s particularly painful, partly because it requires J.C. to suddenly act like a moron.) The silliness and exaggeration somewhat undercuts the movie’s potent message: that a hyper-capitalist corporate world negates parenthood—for both men and women—by self-inflicted design. Unfortunately, not all of us can become rich by making organic baby food on our Vermont hobby farms instead.
(2/1/2026)
