Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Best movie ever!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

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.

I liked this film...although it took some effort to do so. Let's start with what's wrong with the film. First and foremost, I couldn't buy Hugh Grant as a child psychologist. That just didn't work for me. Additionally, at least at this phase of his life, he needed to tone up a bit. His body just looked non-sexual...in a film that is essentially about sex. And his modified page boy haircut. And I say all that as a person who generally likes Hugh Grant in films.The other thing that just doesn't seem to work here is Robin Williams' stint as a Russian obstetrician. I'm not quite sure why it doesn't work, and it does deliver a few laughs, but it just kinda lays there.Julianne Moore as the female lead does nicely, although this role seems out of her normal scope. Tom Arnold does okay as an overbearing friend. Even better is Joan Cusack as his wife, who rarely fails to make me laugh! Jeff Goldblum seems out of place here and in a role that is rather minor; he's a better actor than the rest in the cast, and deserves a better and more prominent role.So I'm sure it sounds as if I'm not recommending this film, but its saving grace is a truly funny conclusion once the water breaks...one that had me laughing out loud repeatedly...and I'm usually one who keeps his chuckles to himself. It made the movie worth watching!

NINE MONTHS is about an expectant couple. To borrow a tagline from a Jeff Goldblum movie: Be afraid. Be very afraid. If the inanity doesn't kill you, the stupidity will.NINE MONTHS opens with Samuel and Rebecca (Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore) on a beach, assessing their couplehood, Samuel deciding he is happy, Rebecca intimating she is dissatisfied. (So what's new? She's a woman in a relationship - synonymous with "dissatisfied.") She speaks of her biological clock and other subjects men Do Not Hear - and we brace ourselves for a dull romantic comedy.Suddenly - Tom Arnold! With three spoiled brat kids and Joan Cusack screeching not far behind as his harridan wife. And we realize we're in for a dull, STUPID romantic comedy.Women are always complaining that men cannot know the pain of childbirth. By watching NINE MONTHS, each of us insensitive men can at last feel such pain.Based on a film written and directed by Patrick Braoudé, NEUF MOIS, Chris Columbus writes and directs NINE MONTHS like a brainless farce rooted in wrong: the wrong way to raise kids, the wrong way to behave during pregnancy, the wrong way to assess morality and the wrong way to medically process a birth (Robin Williams makes an embarrassing cameo as a Russian obstetrician who seems to have his accent confused with his asshole).Marty's (Arnold's) kids are such horrible snots that this movie shoots itself in the womb as it is trying to send the message that kids are precious.Jeff Goldblum is Sean, Samuel's best friend and sworn bachelor. And the high point of the movie - he's the B-character, but his presence is magnetic; it's like a professional has been called in to work amateurs. When he calls Marty's kids "monsters" - even though they are portrayed that way - he is regarded as perverse as a guy who turns into a human fly. When Sean describes how he dumped his girlfriend when she wanted to get pregnant, he is again painted as hilariously crazy, even though he is the most balanced character in the movie: "She chewed up my manhood, swallowed my youth... She wanted my seed, so I closed the iron door, denied her my essence!" And he left out the part about his baby being a maggot.When Rebecca falls pregnant, she tells Samuel she gets a kick out of "something living inside her." (Was she talking about Samuel's English pinewood during intercourse? Maybe she should talk to Geena Davis during that dream sequence birth.) For the record, girly, nothing is "living inside you" - your baby is a part of your metabolism. It IS you until it is birthed. If you want to talk about things living inside you with a sovereign metabolism, think about the billions of bacteria in your mouth or the bacteria that helps digest food in your villi. Got tapeworm? Why not a gerbil?Message comes through loud and stupid: Pregnant mothers are the best people in the world. The expectant father is Always Wrong. And getting to the hospital during labor is always going to be riddled with idiocy. And the sworn Monster Bachelor can't possibly be happy with a 25-year-old blond on his arm with "breasts like spongecake, calves like calzones and crazy about sex," because bachelors are men and Men Are Pigs. And though it is happening naturally in billions of organisms around the Earth, though the process of birth is no more outside the natural order of life than breathing, though there is nothing about pregnancy that defies logic or biology, whenever a women plops out an infant human being, it is somehow always - a Miracle.And then there's the other subliminal message that because the mother is pregnant, she HAS to get married to her live-in boyfriend before the birth, because heaven forfend if they're not married when the baby is born - it might be the anti-Christ or a maggot or something...Give her nine more months cleaning up vomit and cack - she'll miraculously be dissatisfied all over again.

Depending on your comedic taste and if you like Hugh Grant you won't be disappointed by Nine Months.Ever afraid of commitment, Grant's character, Samuel, has it all - well certainly as much as he is comfortable with. With a successful practice as a child psychotherapist, pretty girlfriend (Julianne Moore), an age old cat and a Porsche, life couldn't get any more demanding. However, unbeknown to Samuel, his girlfriend Rebecca is starting to feel as though something is missing from life - a child.During a drive home one day, whereby Samuel is voicing his disapproval of modern parenting and the amount of troubled kids he has to deal with, Rebecca announces she is pregnant which causes him to crash the car in disbelief. In spite of the pregnancy being purely accidental, Samuel begins to feel like a rabbit caught in the headlights and inwardly cowers at the thought of how his perfect and self-serving existence may have to be compromised.What follows is his deceitful and feigned interest in his unborn child once it becomes evident that Rebecca wants to keep the baby. But as the pregnancy progresses his indifference becomes clear to Rebecca as he misses or turns up late for scans, protests when he is told by the doctor that his cat will have to be re-homed and that his beloved Porsche will have to be traded in for a family friendly alternative.Throw in his friend (played by Jeff Goldblum), his friend's sister, husband and three errant kids who are nothing but a harsh omen of what the future holds and both external chaos and inner turmoil ensue.Hugh Grant is a master at portraying the suppressed British buffoon and this movie is by no means an exception. Will he eventually accept he must grow up and take responsibility or will he call time on what he once cherished as a relaxed and chaos free partnership?

I did enjoy most of Nine Months, my favourite part was the ride to the hospital, that was hilarious, and Robin Williams was priceless. Nine Months was nice to watch, but some of it is uneven. Hugh Grant is dashing in the lead, and Julianna Moore as his love interest likewise. However there are other parts that didn't work quite as well. Jeff Goldblum is at least watchable, but the usually excellent Joan Cusack gives a fairly miserable performance as Gail Dwyer. The script has its ups and downs where the humour felt forced, likewise with the story, where some parts were overly sentimental and hurt the pace at times. Nine Months certainly isn't a terrible movie, it just didn't work as much as it had potential to have. 6/10 for a valiant effort. Bethany Cox