Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Three Men and a Baby - Revisited

I finally re-watched Three Men and a Baby.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience despite the fact that I had the popcorn, but no orange Fanta (which had been part of my plan).  The teensy mens running shorts, the comically large portable phones, the mustaches...amazing.  Two decades after my original screening, the plot and characters remained as entertaining as a I remembered.

Here is the list of my memories from the post Three Men and a Baby - My Memory (in bold) with some corrections and notes that I gathered from my recent viewing:



  • The baby's mom was British - YES, yes she was.  Surprisingly, I hadn't remembered anything about the baby's dad, which turned out to be Ted Danson's character.





  • The diaper changing scene was a funny highlight - It wasn't as funny at my current age as it had been at my previous age, though I'm certainly not too old or cool for potty humor.  There was a lot of projectile urination, which confused me given that the baby was a girl (Mary).  Can any mother of a baby girl please confirm whether baby girls projectile pee?





  • One of the three men was an architect - Tom Selleck's character was in deed an architect, which is central to the plot and thus not all that impressive in terms of my memory.  Ted Danson was an actor and Steve Guttenberg was a...umm...I already forget.  





  • Someone was trying to steal the baby...is this even true?!  Sort of true.  The bad guys were actually trying to retrieve their drugs that had been accidentally/intentionally delivered to the guys' apartment, but there was a misunderstanding that almost led to the snatching of baby Mary and then a later threat to take her.





  • Ghost myth - This was lost on me.  My memory about the precise scene and location of the ghost was gone, so I didn't know where and when to look.  Any helpers on this point?





  • The baby had strawberry blond, curly-ish hair - Nope.  The baby was bald, as most babies are.  I think I'm confusing this with the less awesome (but still good...per my memory) sequel, Three Men and a Little Lady.





  • The apartment they shared was big and very cool with something unique about the front door that I can't quite put my finger on - was it an elevator that led straight in?  Yes.  After re-watching, this is an unsurprising memory given the prominence of the lobby/entrance of the apartment.  Steven Guttenberg's character paints a big, flashy mural of the three men in the opening scene, which is ultimately modified in the closing scene to include baby Mary and her mother.





  • What did this experiment teach me?  One, my memory is pretty good.  Two, the Eighties was a decade of excess - big hair, big phones, big shoulder pads.  And, we should all be happy that it was authentically captured in movies like Three Men and a Baby.  Three, Tom Selleck hasn't changed bit.  What a looker, mustached and all.  Last, I think I should watch Three Men and a Little Lady, for old time's sake...


    4 comments:

    Coll said...

    Absolutely love this movie. My sister and I used to watch it over and over. The scene with the ghost was always bizarre to me because I remember thinking, "Who is that boy in the background?"

    Here is a clip, it's right around the 35 second mark.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF2f__k0Pnw

    Leah (it's me) said...

    Coll - You and your sister have fantastic cinematic taste. Thank you for the clip...there is definitely a little boy there. Do you know the ultimate story behind it? Are there still claims that it was a ghost or did an explanation surface?

    WW said...

    I am pretty sure they now leave that scene out of released video tapes.

    I heard that the "ghost" was actually a cardboard cutout of one of the actors for something like the lobby of a movie theater. It was left on set by some intern and ultimately cast a shadow in a seriously bad place.

    Here is an article about it:

    http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/3menbaby.asp

    Alzbeta said...

    Girls can definitely projectile urinate :).