Paternity (1981) Paramount/Comedy RT: 94 minutes Rated PG (sexual dialogue) Director: David Steinberg Screenplay: Charlie Peters Music: David Shire Cinematography: Bobby Byrne Release date: October 2, 1981 (US) Cast: Burt Reynolds, Beverly D’Angelo, Norman Fell, Paul Dooley, Elizabeth Ashley, Lauren Hutton, Juanita Moore, Peter Billingsley, Jacqueline Brookes, Linda Gillen, Mike Kellin, Victoria Young, Elsa Raven, Carol Locatell, Kay Armen, Murphy Dunne, Kay Kalem, Kathy Bendett, Alfie Wise, Tony DiBenedetto, Dick Wieand, Hector Troy. Box Office: $18.8M (US)
Rating: ** ½
The Burt Reynolds comedy Paternity didn’t win any Oscars, but it did take home a well-deserved Golden Razzie award for its opening song, the non-hit “Baby Talk” written and sung by David Frishberg. Get a load of these lyrics:
“Papa says dada, baby says dada too/Mama goes ga ga, baby goes goo goo goo/Now that’s hardly fancy phraseology and yet it’s understood/Babies agree a little baby talk works real good.”
The rest of the song isn’t much better and it’s absolutely as annoying to the ear as the words read on paper. Wait, it gets worse. It’s followed by a collage of baby pictures accompanied by the sound of babies crying. A LOT of babies! The end of the opening credits couldn’t come soon enough. Thankfully, what follows is an improvement.
Burt, in nice guy mode here, plays Buddy Evans, a confirmed bachelor going through a mid-life crisis. He just turned 44 and while it seems like he has it all- sweet apartment, great job (he manages events at Madison Square Garden) and playboy lifestyle- something is missing. He wants to leave his mark on the world. He wants everybody to know Buddy Evans was here. Because he likes children, he decides a son is the best way to carry on his name. There’s just one little hitch. He doesn’t want to get married. He decides to hire a surrogate mother, a woman willing to carry his offspring without becoming emotionally involved.
After a series of awkward interviews including one with an attractive interior decorator (Hutton, Zorro the Gay Blade) he mistakes for an applicant, he finds his babymaker by chance. She’s Maggie (D’Angelo, Coal Miner’s Daughter), a coffee shop waitress who’s just been accepted to a prestigious program in Paris to study music. She needs money to pursue her dream which is why she accepts Buddy’s proposition. For $50,000, she’ll gladly conceive and carry his child, no emotions involved. She even moves in with him so he can monitor her pregnancy.
Paternity is one of those movies where the notion of spoilers doesn’t apply. There are no surprise plot twists or shocking revelations. The plot is simplicity itself and the outcome is a foregone conclusion. We know right from the start that Buddy and Maggie will develop feelings for each other. We know that he’ll eventually do or say something thoughtless and she’ll walk out on him. A period of sadness on both their parts will follow. That will be followed by the inevitable happy ending where they finally say what they should have said ages ago. It’s a clockwork plot if ever I saw one. That’s not to say Paternity is a bad movie. It’s not. It’s simply a mediocre one.
To be fair, Paternity is amusing at times. I’m talking chuckles, chortles and giggles rather than big belly laughs here. The humor is on the level of a sitcom. It’s directed by comedian David Steinberg whose other major title is the 1983 comedy Going Berserk starring SCTV vets John Candy, Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy. Trust me, it’s not as horrible as the other critics say. He’s better known for his work on TV shows like Designing Women, Mad About You, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He does a decent job with Paternity. Not every joke lands, but none of them are painful either.
It’s interesting to see Burt try something a little different. We usually think of him as the cocky good ol’ boy from Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and The Cannonball Run. He’s done some fine dramatic work too- e.g. Deliverance and Boogie Nights. He dials down his traditional screen persona in Paternity playing a basically nice but selfish guy who doesn’t want to compromise his lifestyle. He’s set in his ways and doesn’t want a wife upending things. Does he really think a child won’t do just that? Can we say clueless? ANYWAY, Burt turns in a decent if unexceptional performance here. He has pretty good comic timing. He also has nice chemistry with co-star D’Angelo in her first leading role. She’s a wonderful actress who totally nailed it as Patsy Cline in Coal Miner’s Daughter. She was also quite good in the underrated Altman-esque comedy Honky Tonk Freeway. She brings plenty of warmth and understanding as Maggie, the woman who might possibly be Buddy’s undoing.
Paternity benefits from a great supporting cast that includes Norman Fell (Three’s Company) and Paul Dooley (Popeye) as Burt’s closest friends, a doctor and lawyer respectively. Juanita Moore of the 1974 blaxploitation Exorcist rip-off Abby has some good scenes as the housekeeper who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. Elizabeth Ashley (Windows) is good as a former lover who comes back into Buddy’s life. If the kid that Buddy shoots baskets with at the Garden looks familiar, it’s because it’s Peter Billingsley, better known as Ralphie from the holiday classic A Christmas Story. Also, Burt’s good buddy Alfie Wise shows up as the most careful cabbie in New York. In a typical “follow that cab” scenario, he refuses to exceed the legal speed limit (35 MPH).
The thing I like best about Paternity is the setting. It takes place in New York City. Specifically, it’s pre-Giuliani NYC. It’s great to see the Big Apple as it used to be. Woody Allen always romanticizes it in his movies. Steinberg sees the beautiful side of it too. It’s the NYC we only see in pre-Giuliani rom-coms. I like it. It’s probably what appealed to me most when I saw it at a Sunday matinee when I was 13. I liked Paternity a whole lot back then. Today, I think it’s just a hair above mediocre. It’s a harmless light comedy that won’t leave a lasting impression once it’s over. The song “Baby Talk”, on the other hand, is too terrible to be forgotten easily.
