Look Who's Talking Now (1993)

Decided to watch "Look Who's Talking Now" as the podcast "How Did This Get Made" is planning to (rightly) eviscerate it in the near future.

In this second sequel to the inexplicably popular "Look Who's Talking" Mikey and Julie have reached the age where they can actually speak, so the hearing thoughts conceit is pushed onto two dogs that come to live with the family. James (John Travolta) and Mollie's (Kirstie Alley) marriage is being put to the test by the long hours James is taking in his new job as a private pilot, flying around his new boss played by Lysette Anthony. Into their lives come two dogs, Rocks (voiced (badly) by Danny Devito) and Daphne (voiced by Diane Keaton). Eventually the film get bored and crowbars these two plots together before giving up and prolapsing into one of the worst music videos your ever likely to see.

What's striking about "Look Who's Talking Now" upon watching it is the disinterest the people involved it making it seemed to have. I'll save Kirstie Alley and John Travolta from too much criticism here, they are doing their best with what was given to them and both have proven themselves capable in other roles. But that's about the only plus point. Logic is sacrificed pretty early on. Rocks ages from a puppy to fully grown dog during the opening scenes, although there's no other indication that any time has passed, the kids are the same age, and their home situation is the same. The daughter Julie (Tabitha Lupien) is enigmatically obsessed with Charles Barkley, in a way that never pans out to be relevant to the plot (almost as if they convinced Barkley to do a cameo and then had to find a way to get it into the plot somehow). The family are struggling financially, in that kinda of 90's Hollywood struggling where they have a massive apartment in New York, a car and the world is so full of qualified pilots that one would struggle to find work. Everything that happens to, and with, the dogs, who the film was supposed to be about, is completely pointless until the end and they both get a "Lassie" moment to help the film find some sort of conclusion.

And then there's the music video. The version I saw was with Jordy's "It's Christmas, C'est Noel". Merde'. The nadir of badly shot, badly conceived, mess.

Fmovies: At least the second film in this god-awful trilogy had the benefit of being so bad and inappropriate it was unintentionally hilarious. This scattershot, occasionally offensive, always unsettling and very dumb film is one of the most boring cinematic experiences in recent memory. The side plot of dogs, (how'd they score DeVito and Keaton, both of whom were doing much better that Alley or Travolta at this point in their carreers?), is useless; the 'dad is hard at work' subplot is just recycled from the second film, (they even use the same dream gag), and the plot doesn't really exist. And why does everyone keep ragging on Travolta's carreer? Being a pilot is no easy feat!

Travolta and Alley, who seem to get along in real life, seem to repel each other onscreen; maybe because they're platonically inclined to each other in reality; onscreen they're like two positively charged magnets pushing each other apart. On top of all that, the casual misogyny throughout is grating and extremely distasteful. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I couldn't resist the temptation, and I found myself liking 'Look Who's Talking Now', even though I knew it wasn't really a... what's the word I'm looking for here... good movie? I think it was because I had gone into it expecting absolutely nothing. It's not the kind of movie that'll change your life, and you'll probably forget you had even seen it the next morning, but it's fun and lightweight, just as films in this genre should be.

The last week, I've gone a movie watching spree, watching at least eleven films in seven days, and this is probably the biggest treasure out of the bunch, if only because it was so much better than I had hoped. Angela's Ashes, The Running Man, Blow, Memento, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Empire of the Sun, Paper Moon, Jacob's Ladder, Leaving Las Vegas, Along Came a Spider, The Stand, the list goes on and on, and, of all those films, this is the one that stands out... if you can believe that. Of course it had it's share of flaws, probably more than the rest of those movies combined, but hey, it just added to the fun instead of detract from it.

I did see Look Who's Talking. I hated it. I hated it with a passion. That was a year ago. Why I hated it, I don't know. I just know that I didn't like it at all. The only reason I rented this movie, it's SECOND sequel, was to see how the series had deteriorated since the first film. Well, if nothing else, it's really improved. I haven't seen the second in the series, but I doubt it could even begin to match the third.

One can guess that Travolta didn't want to be here. You've gotta feel sorry for the guy. Once one of Hollywood's biggest stars, through the eighties he was reduced to parts in TV movies and bland films like The Experts. He struck box office gold in 1989 with the first Look Who's Talking, and then made a few wrong moves and was right back down at the bottom of Hollywood, even appearing in both of the sequels. Well, if he was bored here, he sure didn't show it. Though his performance seemed to wane a bit towards the end, he was engaging all the way through, and obviously didn't feel as though the material was below him like many actors would've had they been in his position.

Kirstie Alley, however, is entirely a different story. Never a particulary good actress, you have to wonder how she rose so high into Hollywood's elite, before plunging again after the first Look Who's Talking. Her screen presence here is non existent, and she is about as much fun to watch as this review probably is to read. Though she doesn't bring the whole film down with her, she comes pretty close at times, and for me at least, didn't garner a single laugh.

As the voices of the two dogs, Rocks and Daphne, Danny DeVito and Diane Keaton fare a lot better than Alley. Given some of the best lines in the film, they add a certain flare to their characters, making us believe that dogs actually can communicate with each other as illustrated here, even if it is clearly not possible. It takes real talent to make the audience believe that. Even if it is just through voice work, chemistry between the two is clearly evident, and you wish they had been given more scenes together, or even seperately. The writers seemed to forget about the dogs for long periods of time and focusing instead of the family, even though the movie was supposed to revolve around the dogs, at least according to the advertising.

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Look Who's Talking Now fmovies. Looks Who's Talking Now was the best of the three. John Travolta and Kirstie Alley have so much spark together. It was a very cute movie and I liked it so much. I think that it is definitely worth seeing and voting a ten on. I don't understand why it has such a low rating, but I guess people are ignorant to talent.

Well, at least this was the last they made(*no*, Hollywood, that was *not* a dare). In that they had run out of different genders of children to give celebrity voices to, they turned to the pets. This time, they give the family two dogs, one of each gender, give them each a voice and lets the kids rest their inner voices. Why is it that infants, right from the womb(which we, again, see, because there apparently can not be an entry in this franchise without that), have the voice of people who are about middle-aged, give or take a handful of years or so? Apparently, even dogs. Oh well, at least these two actors, DeVito and Keaton, aren't too bad(not that I had a problem with Willis, at least as an actor), and the former's voice fits rather well for a canine. Take that any way you want. At least Roseanne is gone... but they make efforts to make Julie as annoying without her, having her tell knock-knock jokes so lame that even the parents would ask her to stop... she also apparently fantasizes about beating Charles Barkley, who must have liked the part, as he did the same thing again three years later, in Space Jam. Dukakis shows up again, in what can only be loyalty(in a film with dogs as main characters, how fitting). Heckerling neither wrote nor directed this... when the very *creator* of a franchise steps down, you ought to know there's something wrong. There is no trace left of any charm the series ever had(which was all found in the first). I would say that the franchise by this point just has overstayed its welcome, but it could be argued that it achieved that before the end credits of the original film. More nightmare sequences, this time being ridiculous(a first for the series; usually, they were just misplaced and more unsettling than anything a young child should watch). The main conflict is essentially rehashed from the first two, only dumbed down. Lysette Anthony shows up, her acting performance being at the same level that it was in Trilogy of Terror II(that would be poor). This film will insult the intelligence of anyone beyond the age of seven, but some of the humor remains above what they will(or should) understand, or ought to watch. The very ending was almost too much. I recommend this to people who like dogs, and men attracted to Lysette. 3/10

Look Who's Talking Now is not absolutely unwatchable and certainly not the worst movie ever made, but for me it is weakest of the series. I really enjoyed the first, and while watchable the second was a disappointment. Look Who's Talking Now has its good points, such as the soundtrack and the two dogs voiced wonderfully by Danny DeVito and Diane Keaton. Plus it is not too bad visually.

However, the concept has been done to death but the story feels very tired this time around, and to further disadvantage there are one too many thin and predictable gags and weak lines in the script. Other than DeVito and Keaton the other acting wasn't so impressive, this time John Travolta and Kirstie Alley seem to be phoning in their performances as the bickering couple. And the ending was far too sentimental for my liking.

Overall, perhaps worth the look but it is disappointing for me anyway. 3/10 Bethany Cox