Micki + Maude (1984)

Strong and Moving!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The first must-see film of the year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Local TV reporter Rob Salinger (Dudley Moore) is married to Micki (Ann Reinking) who is trying to be a high power judge. He wants to have children but she wants to hold off. He is sent to do a piece on concert cellist Maude Guillory (Amy Irving). He has an affair with her and she gets pregnant. He is about to ask Micki for a divorce when she tells him that she's pregnant. He doesn't divorce Micki and marries Maude anyways. Only his boss Leo (Richard Mulligan) knows the truth as Rob tries to live his double lives.Director Blake Edwards sometimes try to make his cheating protagonists appealing. It's not appealing and I don't like Rob in this movie. He's trying to get points for marrying both women but it's his cheating that started the whole thing. It's not fun. There isn't much screwball humor until the hospital. By then, I only really like Amy Irving.

Dudley Moore is a television news reporter married to lawyer Anne Reinking (Micki). They are in love - deeply in love - but she is committed to her legal career. This means working overtime on her cases and briefs. So Moore is unhappy about seeing so little of her. He needs to be in a closer relationship with his wife.His producer/friend Richard Mulligan sends him on an assignment to cover a female string ensemble whose cellist is Amy Irving (Maude). In demonstrating how "through the magic of creative cutting" he will be able to appear on camera asking her questions that she answered already, Dudley and Amy start chatting. And he takes her to dinner. And soon they are in love - deeply in love.Well Dudley decides to tell Anne it's all over, but discovers her awaiting him with good news: she is pregnant! Well he can't leave a pregnant wife...so he returns to Amy to tell her it is all over. But she is awaiting him. She's pregnant too! He can't desert her now either. In fact, he has to marry her.As mentioned in another of the various comments here, the opening does drag a little, but MICKI & MAUDE is one of those films that starts slow, and then goes wild. Moore (with some assistance from pal Mulligan) has to marry Amy, and keep her and Anne happy in their separate pregnancies without them knowing of each other. The marriage is difficult enough (he runs into Anne's parents outside of the church that Amy and he are about to be wed in). The difficulties of working enough to support two families (helped out by the fact that both wives are working too) is exhausting - though Mulligan tries to help. Finally both wives are using two obstetricians (George Gaynes and Wallace Shawn) who share the same offices. They and their two patients are kept in the dark, but their nurse (Lu Leonard) is fully aware of what is going on and disgusted by it.A typical combination of slapstick (which Moore handles well) and one liners that Edwards is famous in his movies for, MICKI & MAUDE works very nicely as a comedy. If not the best comedy in Dudley Moore's career, it comes close (especially in the conclusion to the two pregnancies at the hospital - where as a special treat Moore stumbles onto a third, unexpected secret). In the end, facing the wreckage of two marriages or whatever, the three leads have to invent some type of arrangement that will satisfy everyone...or will it?

Likable Blake Edwards comedy with Moore who plays a frustrated news reporter with two wives, who are both pregnant at the same time. Yikes! This farce is pleasant and Moore carries it beautifully with his usual timing and flair. One of his best!

A brilliant comedy, which is without a doubt the best film Blake Edwards has ever made. In a Golden Globe winning performance, Dudley Moore is immensely likeable as the hapless Rob Salinger. He is superbly supported by the always lovely and excellent Amy Irving as Maude, while Ann Reinking had the best role of her confusingly brief career as Micki. A sweet, funny and highly original film.