Which is why Grant's first big-budget American film, Nine Months , is all the more disappointing. Here is Grant, the one-man charm brigade who lit up Four Weddings and a Funeral, reduced to simpering and slapstick. In Nine Months , Grant plays Samuel Faulkner, the last surviving yuppie scum. This happens quite literally, as Samuel trashes his sports car in shock. Such overblown reactions are typical of this movie's oppressive humor.
Sex is out, for starters.
If only the movie was grown-up about its topic. The slapstick can be hilarious, such as when Samuel and Marty battle Arnie, a spoof of Barney the dinosaur. But too often the physical gags are forced and painful, like the climactic delivery-room scene that degenerates into a Three Stooges routine before your eyes. The usually reliable Robin Williams, playing a nervous Russian obstretrician, suffers the most from this slam-bang approach. Children are monsters, women are praying mantises waiting to devour men, and men are noble sufferers trying to weather it all.