Three Men and a Cradle

Coline Serreau's comedy about three hardened bachelors saddled with a newborn baby, produced on a modest budget and without bankable talent, is warm, hilarious and well-made. Serreau's direction is bright and confident, avoiding the saccharine pitfalls of the material.

A simple equation, perhaps, but when it comes to comedy, simpler is frequently funnier. This formula has already worked beautifully in France, where the movie has broken all box-office records and has won three Cesars (the French equivalent of the Oscar) including one for best picture.

While the story has few surprises, parts of it are amusing and the performances are convincing.

Serreau directs for maximum freneticism, with her actors rushing around and regurgitating great torrents of imperfectly subtitled dialogue (a gratuitous subplot involving drug traffickers seems to have been inserted just to double the hysteria), and while there are more than a few laughs, most of them are laughs of recognition—seeing these gags again is like coming across long-lost (and vaguely embarrassing) relations.

The point is well taken, but, basically, Cradle is a long rapturous interlude of baby pictures, now and then reinforced with pointed pro-momma dialogue. Even with the politics, it remains just so much French Pablum. [09 May 1986, p.28]

3 Men and a Cradle has precious few laughs. Shot in a strangely grave, twilight style ill suited to the sitcom premise, the movie plods dully from one foreseeable irony to the next. [26 May 1986, p.72]

No one with the slightest knowledge of human nature will be able to find a single moment of this film to believe. It is all formula, every last miserable frame of it.