Movie · 1987 · Drama, Comedy, Romance · 1h 50m · PG · English
Curator score: 3.2/10 (24K ratings)
JC Wiatt, corporate powerhouse, just received an inheritance. And it sucks.
Overview
J.C. Wiatt is a talented and ambitious New York City career woman who is married to her job and working towards partner at her firm. She has a live-in relationship with Steven, a successful investment broker who, along with J.C., agreed children aren't part of the plan. J.C.'s life takes an unexpected turn when a distant relative dies and the will appoints her the caretaker of their baby girl, Elizabeth. The baby's sudden arrival causes Steven to leave, breaking off their relationship. Juggling power lunches and powdered formula, she is soon forced off the fast track by a conniving colleague and a bigoted boss. But she won't stay down for long. She'll prove to the world that a woman can have it all and on her own terms too!
Ratings
Curator score: 3.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.18/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 70%
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
Charles Shyer
Production
United Artists, The Meyers/Shyer Company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cast
Diane Keaton, Sam Shepard, Harold Ramis, Kristina Kennedy, Michelle Kennedy, Sam Wanamaker, James Spader, Pat Hingle, Britt Leach, Mary Gross, Kim Sebastian, Elizabeth Bennett, Beverly Todd, William Frankfather, Annie O'Donnell, George Petrie, Victoria Jackson, John C. Cooke, Carol Gillies, Hansford Rowe
Curator Review
Verdict
A breezy, smartly cast 80s workplace comedy with a strong Diane Keaton performance and a surprisingly progressive premise, but it leans on familiar rom-com and career-woman clichés. The baby antics and culture-clash humor are the main draw; the emotional and social commentary is lighter than it wants to be.
Best for
fans of 80s studio comedies
viewers who like career-vs-family stories
Diane Keaton admirers
light romantic comedies with a feminist angle
Skip if
you want a sharp, modern take on work-life balance
you dislike broad baby-comedy setup
you prefer understated or realistic drama
you’re looking for a deeply nuanced romance
Overview
Baby Boom works best as a star vehicle for Diane Keaton, who makes J.C. Wiatt feel both formidable and increasingly unmoored as her life gets upended. The movie gets a lot of mileage out of the contrast between Manhattan ambition and domestic chaos, and it has enough wit to keep the premise from feeling purely schematic.
Worth noting
What lingers is less the plot than the attitude: it treats a woman’s professional identity as real, valuable, and worth defending, even when the movie also indulges in glossy fantasy solutions. The romance is pleasant, the satire is mild, and the baby-comedy material is often more amusing than profound.
Bottom line
As a product of late-80s studio filmmaking, it’s polished, accessible, and easy to watch, but it doesn’t fully escape the era’s tidy compromises. Still, if you want a charming, performance-driven comedy about reinvention, it’s an agreeable one.
Top Letterboxd reviews
winona (2.5★) · 844 likes
actually stressed over the ways diane keaton was holding the baby in the first 30 minutes of the movie
cathy (3.5★) · 810 likes
the first hour of this was a psychological horror movie about a baby undoing the work of a master girlboss
Gab (4.5★) · 433 likes
Diane Keaton not knowing how to hold a baby is Cinema
eely (2★) · 289 likes
I know it’s a very niche request, but having a sexy veterinarian proposition me in the library of donna tartt’s alma mater while I’m reading up on baby food sales as the snow falls gently outside seems like it would cure so many of my current ailments.
Sally Jane Black · 273 likes
The tension between being a working woman and being a mother is one devised by patriarchy. Pre-class societies divided labor in a way that was equal and saw that children were cared for by a community. As patriarchy arose, through the ages and various economic systems, strict gender roles arose that forced women to give free labor in the form of childcare (etc.) and enforced stringent views on gender and sexuality that have only fueled and flourished under capitalism. The… more The tension between being a working woman and being a mother is one devised by patriarchy. Pre-class societies divided labor in a way that was equal and saw that children were cared for by a community. As patriarchy arose, through the ages and various economic systems, strict gender roles arose that forced women to give free labor in the form of childcare (etc.) and enforced stringent views on gender and sexuality that have only fueled and flourished under capitalism. The… more