
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 26, 1994                   TAG: 9501190006
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

'JUNIOR' IS A BIG JOKE THAT WEARS THIN

"Junior" is the kind of movie that is hard to approach with an open mind: The premise is so silly, it's almost offensive. But it boasts among its cast members an actress so wonderful - Emma Thompson - that you think maybe, just maybe, it has wit. Or insight. Why else would she do it?

Well, "Junior" lives up to its first impression, in many ways: It is dumber than it is funny, and it never reaches beyond a very simplistic, unimaginative exploration of male and female roles.

But Thompson survives intact and nearly saves the movie. But not quite.

With extraordinary comic agility, she plays the nerdy researcher Diane Reddin who is the unwilling egg donor for an unethical and bizarre scientific experiment, undertaken by a fertility specialist, Dr. Larry Arbogast (Danny DeVito) and another researcher, Alex Hesse (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Arbogast and Hesse have been turned down by the FDA to do trials on a fertility drug.

So Arbogast talks Hesse into subjecting himself to an implanted pregnancy to test the drug. All that's missing is an egg, which Arbogast steals from Reddin's lab. Little does he know, the egg is the researcher's very own, which she has decided to keep frozen until she has time to start a family.

Ah-nuld gets pregnant, and the real silliness begins.

Apparently the director, Ivan Reitman, who did the "Ghostbusters" movies, "Twins" and "Dave," and the writers (Kevin Wade and Chris Conrad) imagine that if a man became pregnant, he would act like the stereotype of a woman. He'd whine when hubby is late for dinner, bemoan his lack of a wardrobe and cry during sappy television commercials. The script doesn't even attempt to convince us that Hesse has become a much more sensitive man because he has learned firsthand a little bit about being a woman by carrying a child.

All the interesting - and funny - stuff happens in the developing romance between Thompson's and Schwarzenegger's characters. Thompson even manages to sidestep the stereotyping of her character, who is supposed to be a terrible klutz. (You know: Smart women have no grace.)

But Thompson isn't in every scene, unfortunately, and in between the movie relies on an apparently endless supply of pregnant women jokes. There's even a scene that involves pickles and ice cream. Snore.

Perhaps the mere thought of a guy as big and burly as Arnold Schwarzenegger being pregnant had someone in stitches in a meeting somewhere in Hollywood. If someone had applied a little brain power to this project, they surely could have come up with something with more impact than a one-liner.

Junior **

A Universal Pictures release showing at Salem Valley 8. Rated PG-13 for adult situations and foul language. 113 mins.

by CNB