The Baby Maker

(Warner Archive, 3.23.2009)

If you were in the small (but vocal) minority that thought Juno was nails-on-a-chalkboard exasperating, The Baby Maker should be a refreshing surprise. Although this early seventies sleeper bears a superficial resemblance to Juno (it has virtually the exact same premise), it also offers a convenient distillation of that film's many shortcomings -- by avoiding them. If Juno was a glossy, oddly mean-spirited crowd pleaser, The Baby Maker is a more handmade, humane and uncompromising study of relationships in the face of unconventional pregnancy. In this case, the protagonist (an effervescent Barbara Hershey) is a free-spirited hippy twentysomething in an open relationship with an even hippier Scott Glenn. Hard-up for cash and open to new ideas, she volunteers to get impregnated by the husband of an infertile, but happily married upper middle class woman.

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