From film debuting writer/director Ben Elton (co-creator of Blackadder, writer of The Thin Blue Line and star of Friday/Saturday Night Live), I had heard bad things about this film, but with a good cast of British stars I will still wanting to see it. Basically Lucy Bell (Joely Richardson) and Sam Bell (Hugh Laurie) are the happy couple with good looks, successful careers and a great love life, but what they long for is a baby, and it doesn't seem to be working. They get tested to make sure they can conceive, and everything seems pretty normal, and they try different methods for helping with conception, such as new age therapy, acupuncture, creative sex, and more besides, and these do not work either. So eventually Lucy and Sam decide upon the medical option, by having professionals, such as gynaecologist Mr. James (Rowan Atkinson), checking everything and trying to make the process more likely to work, and they have support from their friends, including hippie Druscilla (Emma Thompson). At the same time, Sam has been suffering writer's block, he works at the BBC as a commissioning editor, and he has to come up with a new idea for a comedy film, and unknown to Lucy he finds inspiration in their struggles, and her private diary. His work friend George (Adrian Lester) knows that he will be in big trouble with his wife if he does not tell her the truth about his writing inspiration, and the new film that is being made, and she is mortified when she finds out for herself. The couple are parted by this incident, and even though the film is completed, with Sam praised for his writing, he does not feel complete without Lucy, who has meanwhile become pregnant. There is the point when they meet again, he apologises, and they make up, with Sam saying that he will look after the baby when it is born, but Lucy has a miscarriage, and in the end all we know is that they carried on trying and trying, it is unclear whether they did get a baby. Also starring Resident Evil's James Purefoy as Carl Phipps, Pirate of the Caribbean's Tom Hollander as Ewan Proclaimer, Matthew Macfadyen as Nigel, Joanna Lumley as Sheila, Dawn French as Charlene and Eden Lake's Kelly Reilly as Nimnh. Laurie is a nice guy with sarcastic one liners, Richardson is sympathetic as the woman who can't get pregnant, and the other well known stars get their small moments, I will agree it is a little flat most of the time, and some of the on the nose jokes don't always work, the story was watchable enough, but overall it is a slightly silly romantic comedy. Adequate!

That pretty sums it up! I was really hoping that this film would be still part the period where you could REALLY have fun in front of a romantic comedy . By that, I mean before the horrifying amount of ghastly Bridget Jones imitations started to invade theaters with silly plots filled with empty-headed and unsympathetic characters, not to mention unbelievable situations. "Maybe Baby" adds insult to injury by purely and simply riping off John Hughes' delightful classic from the late 80s. A time where you could spend your money on a mainstream movie without systematically feeling totally mugged. The nice bunch of co-stars doesn't save this poor excuse for a film either: Joanna Lumley is wasted, Rowan Atkinson's hamming doesn't help a bit, Emma Thompson is just passing through, and so on and so on... On top of that, all is so unbearably neat and tidy like in a clinic, that you could fear to have been impregnated without knowing it while watching this junk. I'll have to see "Rosemary's Baby" again and again to forget that terrible experience. As for the 90 minutes lost, well, so much for my naivety!

I got a hold of this film only because I was interested in seeking out more of Hugh Laurie's work. I did not know what to expect - did not even know it was a comedy.And it turned out to be a hoot. One of the funniest films I've seen in a long time. I thought the screenplay was excellent. Fantastically clever dialogue.Now I'm very keen to embark on a quest to unearth whatever else screenwriter and director Ben Elton has done.One of the things I especially liked about how this film was put together was the way it combined absurdity and farce with a more conventional rom-com approach.The cameos by Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson were fall-out-of-your-seat hilarious (as were the more lengthy contributions of Matthew Macfadyen). At first I sort of wondered if they would jerk me out of involvement with the story line but they did not.In fact, I think this is a really smart approach to doing a comedy. Too much broad farce in one film can quickly lead to burn-out. But when it's limited for the most part to cameos, it's very welcome and entertaining and enhances rather than detracts from engagement with the plot.The casting in this film was inspired. Joely Richardson was perfect. Matthew Macfadyen could not have been better. James Purefoy was wonderful. As was Adrian Lester.Surprisingly, since it was his work specifically I was initially looking forward to seeing, Hugh Laurie's was the only performance in which I was somewhat disappointed. Laurie seemed to go out of his way to low-key it. I think he chose to go too minimalist in his interpretation of his character. Just my opinion. But hey, Hugh Laurie, even not at his best is still pretty darn terrific.I think writer and director Ben Elton created an exceptionally entertaining and at times very moving film that is very much worth seeing. In fact, I think this film has the potential to have the lifespan and long reach of many of the screwball comedies of the 40s.

I ran across this movie today on the WE channel. It caught my attention because it had Hugh Laurie in it and I'm a huge fan of his. So I sat down to watch. I'm glad I did. I went through 7 years of trying to conceive and could relate to just about everything the couple was going through. I laughed out loud when Lucy was riding her moped back from the gyno and she had been lubed up and she slipped off the seat. I thought it was very well written. We got to see just how much this couple loved each other. I do think that Lucy blew the whole diary thing out of proportion. Yes she had a right to be angry but to want to throw her whole marriage down the drain seemed a little ridiculous. I would recommend watching it.