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She's Having a Baby (1998) - ★★☆☆☆


I was all ready to write a terribly mean review of this awful movie. I would have said that John Hughes was a stupid annoying baby who thought he was sooooo special and sooooo quirky and that his characters were soooooo unique that they were the only ones in the world who ever felt like they didn't quite fit into suburban life. I would have said that he should have stopped making movies long ago; in fact, I would have said that the only movie he ever should have made is Pretty in Pink. I would have said that Kevin Bacon looked like and idiot, and I would have pointed out that Alec Baldwin grew up to play the boss baby. I would have mentioned that the only good thing in the whole movie was the mom from Downton Abbey's haircut.

I only got madder when the credits began to roll and I realized that Woody had not been in the movie at all. Was this another false alarm? Another movie for me to suffer through for no reason? I was opening this page to type out my furious blog post when some inane celebrity from the 90s popped up, and I realized what was about to happen. Woody was going to be in the end credits scene, providing some joke name for the titular baby. Well, I thought, that doesn't quite make up for it. I'm still going to write a mean review, and I'm still going to rank this movie as low as I possibly can. I thought the same when Woody finally popped up, wearing a classic black t-shirt. 


I fumbled for my well-worn screenshot keys, but caught Woody too late.

What happened next changed everything. Instead of Jane Fonda, or Ferris Bueller, or any other of the countless unidentifiable famous people who also appeared in this final montage, a familiar pair of rectangular black sunglasses were caught in my too-slow screenshot. I'd captured not the likeness of Woody, the second most important celebrity in my life, ROY ORBISON. Roy Orbison!


I had only discovered about a week earlier Roy Orbison's short lived film career, and vowed to myself that I needed to find a way to watch The Fastest Guitar Alive once I'd watched all of Woody's movies. I'd imagined, briefly, how indescribably wonderful it would be if Roy and Woody had been in a movie together.

And, like God was laughing at me, they were—in quick succession, one after the other, in one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. I actually got up and jumped up and down in my room, my excitement and disgust and the bitter realization that John Hughes had bested me too much to be contained. 

Because I couldn't write any of the mean things I wanted to about this movie anymore. Worse, I had to be thankful that it existed, otherwise Woody and Roy never ever would have been in the same movie. How awful!

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