Cinema
Junior (PG', selected cinemas)
Arnie's having a baby
Mark Steyn
Perhaps because they're such assiduous contributors to The Spectator letters pages, we tend to assume that all Hollywood stars are interested in issues. Even when they are, the public knows what really counts: Kevin Costner, for example, makes a movie rewriting the Western from the Native American perspective and all the audience debates is the flabbiness of his buttocks; another star, who regularly issues state- ments declaring his concern for the envi- ronment and animal welfare, is more celebrated for allegedly attempting a sex act which required the surgical removal of a gerbil from his sphincter. One can only admire a man whose commitment to ani- mal rights extends to opening a wildlife sanctuary in his own bottom, but it's curi- ous that none of his films explores any issues as deeply as that gerbil explored his butt.
Indeed, Hollywood's approach to issues is almost admirably perverse: whenever they decide to tackle a subject of great psy- chological and ethical complexity, they give it to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In last sum- mer's True Lies, Arnie's wife Jamie Lee Curtis discovers that her meek mild-man- nered husband is in reality a United States intelligence agent: instead of being shat- tered by the realisation that the man she Tou want to know how much I'm worth?' thought she knew so well is some other fel- low entirely and that her marriage has been a lie, she grabs a semi-automatic and off she and Arnie go to blow away those wackY Arab terrorists. Now, in Invan Reitman's Junior., Schwarzenegger turns to one of the thorn!. est dilemmas of our time: should scientific advances be constrained by what we regard as the natural order of things? In other words, in this film Arnie gets pregnant and you know that all those controversial questions swirling around surrogate moth' erhood and test-tube babies aren't going t° get a look in. Instead of In Vitro Fertilisa- tion, this is DeVito Fertilisation: pang DeVito jabs a needle in Arnie's turnmY, the last action hero fills his specimen bottle W the brim, and that's it. From the Terinula" tor to the Urinator, from Conan the Bar- barian to Conan the Caesarean accompanied by Sinatra singing 'I've Go' You Under My Skin', some conaplimea's from colleagues about how 'radiant he looks and a few passing problems atwilt sore nipples. The nearest we get to a point of view is when Arnie, eight months pregnant, throws the scheming head of the university across the room and declares, 'My body, thYd choice!' Otherwise, Junior's straightforwar lack of ambition is disarmingly charming: Clearly, everyone was so thrilled with tha' two-word pitch — `Schwarzenegger. Preg' nant' — that they figured nothing else was needed. In fact, it's a lot easier to believe that Arnie's pregnant than that he 3 respected professor researching a new fel; tility drug; easier to believe he's capable giving birth than that he's capable of plar mg comedy. In some ways, pregnancy completes his physique: every other bit of him — thig:hs pecs, neck, forehead veins — is bulging a' protruding and fit to burst, so why not his belly? Besides, everything comes easY Arnie. We're into talking Stanislavski he he has to play a professor, so he wears a pair of glasses. Everything else he leaves t° the crew: in True Lies, he was supposed if be a great dancer, but Arnie's not the s°1:, to schlepp along to dance lessons, ay. instead it's left to the camera to waltZ afte fully around his feet of clay. Why woutel,h, approach pregnancy any less carelesa!Y's Lamaze classes, lambada classes: he Oa 'em all. The egg, incidentally, is Emma Th°1114; son's — and anyone who &aid Schwarzenegger can't do comedy get a load of his co-star. She enters eras'', ing through the lab on a refrigerated doltri.: trolley: a tired sight gag, unmotivatera' unjustified, unearned, it's a classic exarhPe, of how a joke is only as good as its plae, ment. It sets the tone for her perforrnariva — a set of characteristics rather that.' a character: she's full of nerdy niannertaor fluttery, skippy bluestocking with a voice, pencil through her hair, proces.'er cheese stuck to her face, toilet paper to shoe. Presumably horrified by the empti- ness of the script, Miss Thompson has gone to town and patronised her character into the ground. Meanwhile, it's left to the comedians — DeVito and Pamela Reed (as his ex) — to bring to the film what humanity and maturity it has. Still, Emma Thompson is an ingenious bit of casting, mainly because by comparison Schwarzenegger's undeviating VoiceMail reading seems like a masterpiece of restrained, naturalistic interpretation. Act- ing-wise, I hope the kid takes after dad.
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