Junior (1994)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Boring

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Junior (1994) ** (out of 4)Dr. Hesse (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Dr. Arbogast (Danny DeVito) are working on a new drug that will help a woman carrying a baby. There's only one way to test it and that's to try it on Hesse.When JUNIOR was announced people were very excited to hear that the TWINS co-stars were making another film together and with the plot being about a pregnant Schwarzenegger it seemed like a sure hit. Sadly, the film didn't turn out to be a hit and it really became one of the more disappointing comedies of the decade.So, what went wrong with the film? It's actually pretty easy and that's the screenplay. The screenplay really didn't doo many original things and in fact the majority of it just felt really lame and unoriginal. The entire film is based around the idea of the tough Schwarzenegger being pregnant and it really does seem as if the filmmakers thought that idea would be good enough to make the film work.Sadly that didn't happen as we get really bad scenes of the big actor doing various "pregnant woman" things but they all just seem so forced and they're certainly not funny. DeVito doesn't get much to do except of playing the supporting husband bit and poor Emma Thompson is just wasted in the role of the wife. JUNIOR should have been much better considering the talent involved but sadly the end result was just too laugh-less to work.

This movie changed me. It taught me that a family is someone that everyone can have, no matter who you are or what your background is. true love is something that is not often found in a movie nor in real life. but this movie made me wish to strive to find that one true person who i can hopefully have a relationship with as good as this one here I shed tears over this, i laughed i cried i formed inseparable bonds with my dear friends i don't think i will ever quite love something as much as i love this movie this is a timeless classic that I hope will stay with the world for decades to come thank you for reading this and thank you junior....... for bringing light back into my life

By reuniting the incongruous Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny de Vito duo again, the exploit of Ivan Reitman's "Junior" is to make an even more touching and funny comedy than his previous "Twins", once again, based on the same premise of an improbable scientific situation.Improbable is quite an understatement. It's crazy enough to have a man facing pregnancy but out of all the actors who could pull it with more or less believability, hiring the ultimate tough guy, the one with the most masculine height and bone structure was quite a risky move. Risky but not absurd, there are times when you're entitled to a certain level of absurdity when making a comedy movie, but you can tell that "Junior" ambition reached higher than simple laughs, it wanted to tell a heart-warming story, a comedy with a heart, as I like to say.This is why the casting was a masterstroke. This isn't "Twins" where Schwarzenegger's perfection was the illustration of a successful genetic manipulation and De Vito, all the opposite, here, Arnie's casting isn't crucial to the part, neither is Danny De Vito, but at the end, you realize that the movie couldn't have worked with better actors. De Vito has this 'streetwise businessman with sharp teeth' thing justifying such a gutsy idea, and Arnie is the cold European scientist so dedicated to his profession that we believe he can be lured into that crazy project.Yet the film could have sinned by cynicism, showing that there's a mad scientist or sorcerer apprentice hiding behind every doctor, and that laboratories would trade ethics for the financial success of a revolutionary medicine, in the film's case, one to increase women's fertility and estrogen production. But they're not allowed to test the medicine on women. Never mind, the bounds of science are unlimited. And after all, didn't Jenner inoculated himself the smallpox virus to check if the vaccination worked, there comes a time where every scientist must question his vocation and push it to the extreme, for science's sake.This left me a little perplexed but by an extraordinary coincidence, the same day I saw "junior", I found a documentary about the history of medicine and viruses, and not only I found out that Jenner actually tested the smallpox vaccination on a little boy, which was even more debatable and could've earned him a radiation had it failed? But that it took almost two decades for penicillin to really get its worldwide attention because Fleming was a good researcher but not much of a marketer and couldn't even get the implications his discovery would make.So, in a way, there's a little mad scientist here, a businessmen there, but it's always for people's own good, and this is where "Junior" really takes you, it's not a movie about lobbying or genetic manipulation. It's the story of a man who discovers his maternal side by the simple process of feeling a baby inside him, and Arnold Schwarzenegger makes it not only believable but also touching, he doesn't overplay, within his own (not so limited) range, he finds the perfect note to draw a touched smile in your face, and there's one wonderful moment where he De Vito's character touch the belly and smiles, so moving you forget the implausibility of the situation.But there can't be a film about pregnancy without women, and both Pamela Reed and Emma Thompson plays respectively De Vito's ex-wife and the scientist who took Arnie's laboratory. Thompson is such a gifted actress that she knows how to make you laugh from rather predictable situations, and her involuntary involvement in the pregnancy gives a film a nice little twist. To close the gallery, there's also Frank Langella who plays the obligatory antagonist to the story but the essential is in the pregnancy.Indeed, they are the reason to be of the film, and everything is handled in such a way that you never feel it over the top. Take when Arnie is disguised as a woman, anyone would laugh at the immediate sight and while it's it's not Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie", Arnie gives a wonderful explanation about the reason his looks don't necessarily match his gender, and we buy it because within the film own zaniness, there's something touching and involving and leading us to a wonderful climax.Now, does the film reflects some gender views that in each man, there's a woman inside, I think it's much more conservative than that. Indeed, by becoming more feminine through pregnancy, there's something that might imply that the main identifying aspect of women is the capability to give life, to carry life, and maybe this is why women are generally, the most protective, the least destructive and the most caring of both sexes. But if this sounds misogynistic to say it, well, that's how sad today's world has become.

Errr...OK where to start with this one? Arnold Schwartzenegger is a scientist who wants to test a pregnancy drug for women but doesn't get permission to do it. Instead, he and Danny DeVito come up with the utterly deranged idea to decide to test it on a man, that being Schwartzenegger obviously. After starting the experiment somehow, Arnold eventually abandons the testing in exchange for keeping the baby, acting like a sensitive woman, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.This film is terrible. It's your basic 1990s big-tough-guy-tapping-into-his-feminine-side awful comedy like 'Mr Nanny' I suppose (lessons which have NOT been beneficial to men OR women, but that's another story). There is some cheesy feminist rhetoric as to 'my body my choice' and 'you should try being a woman, it's a nightmare' (which in and of itself makes no logical sense), and none of it is remotely funny. I suppose the problem is that now that male sensitivity is mainstream to a somewhat crippling level, this film fails to be funny anymore. It just looks dated. The science which propels this horrifying idea forward is broken - how the hell does Arnold even grow a baby, having no womb? For me, I'd rather commit seppuku than watch this god-awful pile of horse manure again.