Branagh shows us the comedy of a man who is too clever to understand that in the guise of dreading fatherhood, he is really at war with how much he longs for it.
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
That's a lot just to justify a cute title, but cuteness is the engine driving the slight, obvious but occasionally very funny film.
Reminds us that when it comes to comedy, it's all in the writing. Mr. Kalesniko's satirically barbed screenplay, whose spirit harks back to the comic heyday of Blake Edwards, stirs up an insistent verbal energy that rarely flags.
50
New York PostMegan Lehmann
New York PostMegan Lehmann
Without Branagh's pitch-perfect comedic skills the entire movie could have been crushed under the avalanche of quips and wisecracks tumbling from Kalesniko's too-clever-by-half pen.
After missing the film on the small screen the first time around, I recently watched it on video, and can only conclude that my screen wasn't small enough.
10
Village Voice
Village Voice
Next to this, even "Mean Machine's" painless soft-tissue spikings and fast-fixing broken limbs are believable -- and way funnier.