Micki + Maude (1984)

Local TV reporter Rob Salinger (Dudley Moore) is married to Micki (Ann Reinking) who is trying to be a high power judge. He wants to have children but she wants to hold off. He is sent to do a piece on concert cellist Maude Guillory (Amy Irving). He has an affair with her and she gets pregnant. He is about to ask Micki for a divorce when she tells him that she's pregnant. He doesn't divorce Micki and marries Maude anyways. Only his boss Leo (Richard Mulligan) knows the truth as Rob tries to live his double lives.Director Blake Edwards sometimes try to make his cheating protagonists appealing. It's not appealing and I don't like Rob in this movie. He's trying to get points for marrying both women but it's his cheating that started the whole thing. It's not fun. There isn't much screwball humor until the hospital. By then, I only really like Amy Irving.

Five years after the success of "10", Blake Edwards and Dudley Moore hit another bullseye with MICKI & MAUDE, a stylish and very funny romantic comedy about a newsmagazine reporter (Moore) married to a workaholic attorney named Micki (Ann Reinking) who longs to be a father and begins an affair with an attractive and funny cellist named Maude (Amy Irving) who he gets pregnant. He agrees to divorce Micki and marry Maude until Micki announces she is also pregnant. Since Micki's pregnancy is high risk, he doesn't want to stress her out so he marries Maude without divorcing Micki and that's when his life becomes complicated to no end. The three stars are absolutely wonderful in their roles. Moore won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy. Richard Mulligan, George Gaynes, and Wallace Shawn offer strong support as Moore's boss and as the ladies' doctors. Though the film is a little on the long side, it remains thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end with one of Moore's best performances.

"Did you ever have to make up your mind?/Say yes to one, and leave the other behind..."Rob Salinger's life becomes a Lovin' Spoonful song when the television reporter hooks up with a friendly cellist and they make a baby. Rob, a frustrated wanna-be father, figures he will never get a child with the career-centered woman he is married to and decides to divorce her. But he is hit for a wallop when a rapt Mrs. Salinger tells him that she is pregnant, too, and eager to embrace a new domesticity with him. It's tough enough making up one's mind when there's two people involved, let alone four, and so Rob decides to make a go of it and tough it out by marrying the cellist, supporting his wife, and juggling like mad.A charming Blake Edwards comedy struggles to get out of the gate with some tedious exposition and some disturbing insights into the central characters. Rob's devotion to parenting is mitigated by his deceitful way with women who love him. The cellist, Maude, doesn't seem bothered about picking off a married guy. Wife Micki is so selfish she even goes to an abortion clinic without telling her husband, who in turn has no qualms keeping her in the dark about Maude so he can use her as his personal incubator. Here's a couple both sides of the Roe v. Wade debate can agree on disliking.But a funny thing happens as the film progresses. It gets funny. Very funny. Dudley Moore plays Rob with comic abandon and flair, playing off his character's monomania in such a way we not only enjoy it but come to root for it. There's a great scene with Richard Mulligan, playing Leo his boss at work, where Rob ponders how to tell Micki the truth, only to find he can't. Leo says just tell her the truth, he knocked up another woman and she's having a baby.Rob demurs. That's a little rough.Tell her: "We're naming the baby after you," Leo suggests. Ouch.Also helping a lot are the women in the story, Ann Reinking as Micki and Amy Irving as Maude. Neither are natural comediennes, and Reinking gave up filmwork after this, but both are terrific foils, setting up laughs for Moore and generating some of their own, like with Micki's drug-induced hysteria while in labor and Maude's way of playacting with monster movies on TV. Both also establish a believable intimacy with Moore's character, which makes his dilemma understandable if not heroic.For his part, Moore delivers a stellar central performance, full of heart and conviction, and many painful-looking pratfalls. Only praying mantises sacrifice more in pursuit of fatherhood than does poor Rob.Moore won a Golden Globe for his performance here, a pretty amazing feat given the four other comedy nominees that year were Bill Murray in "Ghostbusters," Eddie Murphy in "Beverly Hills Cop," Steve Martin in "All Of Me," and Robin Williams in "Moscow On The Hudson." That's a Murderers Row of talent, each a career role in great careers, and while I'd pick Martin myself, I think Moore deserved something for his great work. I'm glad he got it.Like many Blake Edwards comedies, this one rolls to a fine finish, actually an amazingly sustained one with two big payoffs, one at a doctor's office where the two women both show up, and the other, of course, at the hospital while both are giving birth. In addition to Mulligan, there's fine supporting work from Lu Leonard as a suspicious nurse and Gustav Vintas as a prickly Germanic doctor. But it's Moore's baby, or babies, and he carries them to the finish line in fine form.The movie's not perfect. The beginning is weak and overlong, as said, and there are some silly bits of Moore at work which feature some labored comedy. Frankly, one reason I'd've give the Globe to Moore is that he had less of a script to work with than the other fine actors, that and Moore never really had any great comedies of his own like they did. It seems fair the underdog won this one time. M&M is a solid charmer, and a nice way of remembering a fine actor at his apex.

Micki+Maude is one of the most satisfying comedies to come out of Hollywood in the 1980's. It is perhaps Blake Edward's last great film, it is also the film in wich Dudley Moore solidified his position as a like-able Romantic Light Comedian worthy of greats like Cary Grant and Jack Lemon. The plot in itself works thanks to a knockout idea, Dudley Moore + 2 wives = Bigamy x Pregnancy. Any theme like that alone would be funny. Handled by one of the all time great American directors, Blake Edwards and starring Cuddly Dudley, it soars. Amy Irving as Micki, and Anne Reinking as Maude are both very enjoyable and frothy charcters, essential to a romantic comedy. One imagines that if he wanted to Edwards could have made this a straight sequel to his hit 10, with Dud reprising his role as George Webber, with Julie Andrews as Micki and Bo Derk as Maude. But Amy Irving and Anne Reinking do just nicely. Michael Le Grand's themes and songs are nice, and the film amounts to a funny and fitting climax. Edwards employs in the fianl scenes lots of Laurel and Hardy imagery and Dud handles this well. Edwards should be proud because not only has he emulated the greatest work of Stan and Ollie with this film, he has created something that in turn will influence generations of Comedy directors. Why on earth this didn't win any Academy Awards i dont know. I can think of an Actor and a Director who thoroughly deserve them.