Nine Months

It isn't Grant who makes Nine Months the funniest movie in months, but a supporting cast of crazies who raise the modern art of physical comedy to new heights, while Grant's character faces unexpected fatherhood. [12 July 1995, p.2B]

Grant is surrounded by terrific comic performances from Robin Williams, Tom Arnold and Jeff Goldblum. Director Chris Columbus bolsters them with lively, robust pacing, turning Nine Months into a comedy of pregnancy that tests positive. [12 July 1995, p.41]

The tone of Nine Months bounces back and forth between farce and sentimentality, and it doesn't always bounce true - the final screaming scene in a new-moon crazed hospital delivery room, for example, goes on way too long. And yet, when it is funny, which is fairly often, Nine Months is very funny. Occasionally, it's hilarious. [14 July 1995, p.3E]

Nine Months is slick, phony and uneven, but it's often raucously funny too. And Mr. Grant displays enough intelligence and sportsmanship to emerge from this ordeal as a major Hollywood star. Read full review

If there were a scale for measuring how much of a movie’s substance was pure plastic, Nine Months, the new maternity comedy directed by Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire), would surely register dangerously high polymer levels. Read full review

Nine Months displays its Capraesque family values with pride, and it will make you laugh, but there's something oddly mechanical about it -- much like Grant himself. Whether or not the actor lives up to his own hype remains to be seen, but judging from Nine Months, his fame has begun to dwarf his talent. [12 July 1995, p.1E]

The trouble with Nine Months is not that Grant's monologues sound like an apologia to his real-life paramour. The trouble here is that not even a comic actor of Grant's skill can tickle such tired material to life. [12 July 1995, p.E01]

It's a big, smiley, free-floating blimp of a comedy: a farce about reluctant fatherhood that could use some parental guidance. [12 July 1995, p.N16]

While not exactly poised to bother the old grey matter too much, will provide a great night's entertainment for sitcom lovers everywhere. But doing for childbirth what Four Weddings And A Funeral did for nuptials remains an unlikely proposition. Read full review

Nine Months does have its problems, but it also has its moments, mainly thanks to a truly remarkable cast. [12 July 1995, p.E1]

Here, the charm doesn't happen because the movie doesn't care about them as people. They have little human dimension; they are the tools of the plot, and it's unfair to ask actors to supply qualities that the screenplay doesn't account for. Read full review

Complacently conventional...it threatens to turn an interesting actor into a self-parodying commodity. Read full review

An exceedingly safe and conventional Chris Columbus comedy. Read full review

Writer/director Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire) delivers his usual slapstick and sap shtick, but the sitcom-slick results fall flat. (It's also based on a French farce - bad sign.) [12 July 1995, p.1D]

Frantically busy, largely laugh-free. Read full review

Vapid. Read full review

Ham-fisted and simplistically drawn. [11 July 1995]

A movie that numbs the head. [12 July 1995, p.E1]

Even a C-section couldn't rescue the shallow script and overplayed performances by Hugh Grant and Tom Arnold. Read full review

Though it strives to be clever, the only time Nine Months manages to be genuinely witty is in its closing credits, when it displays baby pictures of its stars. It's a small touch but it's not overdone, which is probably why it provides such a contrast with its surroundings. [12 July 1995, p.F1]

Good for a few laughs but soon turns tiresome, veering incongruously between slapstick antics and mushy sentimentality. Read full review

Pitiful. Read full review

There's obviously a huge appetite for humour this broad, and I wish I shared it. Instead, like a picky vegetarian at a Texas barbecue, I felt out of place, hungry, and a little sad. Not altogether different, perhaps, from a certain British actor on a seedy Sunset Strip. [14 July 1995]