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She's Having a Baby

She's Having a Baby

Comedy · Drama · Romance · 1988

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

Movie details

She's Having a Baby

“Man. Woman. Life. Death. Infinity. Tuna casserole. One movie dares to tell it all.”

1988 Comedy · Drama · Romance 1h 46m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.0 / 10

14.3K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

45 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

41 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

5.9 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over She's Having a Baby?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

John Hughes

Written by

John Hughes

Kevin Bacon

Kevin Bacon

Jake Briggs

Elizabeth McGovern

Elizabeth McGovern

Kristy Briggs

Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin

Davis McDonald

William Windom

William Windom

Russell Bainbridge

Holland Taylor

Holland Taylor

Sarah Briggs

Cathryn Damon

Cathryn Damon

Gayle Bainbridge

John Ashton

John Ashton

Ken

Court is in session

Put She's Having a Baby on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.