Baby Done Review: It Is Neither Cute Nor Scathing, Just Annoying

Baby  Done

Starring Rose Matafeo ,Matthew Lewis 

Directed  by  Curtis  Vowell

Rating: **

Films about reluctant couples having  a baby  are rare nowadays. The favoured  flavor is fertility, or the search for it,  as  couples do their best to have   baby  in  recent films  like  Only You  and  Making babies.

 Baby, Done  goes  the  other way, as a weird wacky couple Zoe  and Tim  are horrified to know they are  going to be  parents. You see, they are the outdoor types. They climb trees and  cut them  for a  living. How  much more outdoor can you get! Zoe played with calculated  insouciance  by Rose Matafeo says she will go bungee jumping even if she’s pregnant.No. make that BECAUSE  she is pregnant.  Understandably this doesn’t sound like  a good idea to  her partner  Tim .

And they split!!!Wish we  could also  be rid of this couple’s  eccentric  iconoclasm. But Zoe and Tim won’t let you go. They are the epitome of coupled caprice. In the tradition of  the romcomritual, they  go their separate ways and meet only in the pregnancy-drill classes where Tim is now partnering  another  pregnant woman to her labour pains. 

Forget the  labour pains, this laboured comedy from New Zealand should have been aborted  on inception. It  plays on our  instinct to  dislike the pregnant woman  to such an extent that she  finally seems  to represent everything opposed to the maternal .

 As a couple Matafeo and her co-star Matthew Lewis are  like two trees with branches that embrace when the wind blows hard.  But that apart, they seem united more by their unorthodoxy than any  genuine empathy.Still  if you like your labour pains layered  with weirdness this is your one-stop guide to perverse parenthood.

 At  one point pregnant  Zoe invites her best friend  for a threesome . Tim is  as horrified and repulsedas we are. But does Zoe care? I have seldom seen a woman less deserving of motherhood. Zoe  represents the bottom-most pit of selfcentredness.I was  not the  least  convinced   by her  sudden surge of  maternal  emotions during childbirth.

 Was she just faking it? To look suitably maternal  on Instagram, perhaps? This  woman is  capable  of  any kind  of charade  as long  as  it makes her look like  non-conformist. Anti-abortionists  would find it hard to sound convincing  after meeting Zoe. Besides climbing  trees, all she seems to care  about is making people climb up the nearest wall. Her parents  love her, though. If only  they had  used protection more carefully.We all make mistakes. But Zoe’s parents made a catastrophic mistake. And this  film’s director  follow closely.