Since Paul and I recently watched Knocked Up (come on, you don't need a link to that), I've been trying to think of any big comedy (or small comedy, for that matter) with the event of childbirth written from the woman's perspective.
Think about the movies with childbirth scenes that you can remember: There's that lame movie from the 80s about the commitmentphobe who struggles with the idea that his wife is pregnant. And that lame movie from the 90s about the commitmentphobe who struggles with the idea that his girlfriend is pregnant.
The first childbirth scene I remember seeing in a movie was from Paternity, that movie with Burt Reynolds. I thought this was the lame 70s movie about the commitmentphobe, etc., but remember now that he was a bachelor looking for a woman to have his baby (and it was 1981, which is sort of like the 70s).
In every case, the former lout undergoes a magical transformation upon the event of childbirth in which he falls hopelessly in love with the baby/babymama/idea of fatherhood right around the time that the woman is being wheeled into delivery (note: women are not wheeled into delivery any more, in case you don't know this already).
Tina Fey to the rescue, possibly. While it is more a movie about an adoption than a childbirth, I have high hopes that Baby Mama (set to release in April 2008), breaks this trend, Fey being a writer and a mother and funny, generally. While it does have the cliche of a single career gal who desperately wants a baby, and the cliche of the working-class gal who finds herself pregnant, it does bring them together to muddle through the pregnancy together, which sounds new. AICN had a quick review of a screening in NYC (which says almost as much about the venue as about the film). Sounds potentially promising.
And, then, of course, mommied as I am, I'm several months late in finding out about Juno (releasing this December, trailer here). It's directed by the Thank You for Smoking guy and was written by Diablo Cody, a girl, so maybe it more than pretends to be from the teenage girl's perspective. And it co-stars Michael Cera, who like collective-crush objects Seth Rogan and, formerly, Burt Reynolds, will likely make it worthwhile.
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How about this moment of insanity from Joan Rivers, which I guess is more like a revenge fantasy than a depiction of anything women actually experience. Or then there's this, which on the face of it seems like an anti-abortion comedy. OK, you win. Women are underrepresented in Hollywood.
And of course, there's the lovely stereotype of the bitter bitchy childless career woman who kills puppies to make fur coats. Or kills pet rabbits.
One movie I saw earlier this year--I think it was Lovely and Amazing--has a somewhat warped character who only seems to talk about her labor experience, years after it happened, to highly inappropriate strangers at parties. Funny, and at least a little different.
Saw a trailer for Juno a couple nights ago and it looks great in a crazy Arrested Development sort of way.
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