Movie Review: Kiwi Climber is preggers and in denial — “Baby Done”

Right.

So what do you make of a pre-natal comedy where Mum’s in denial and Dad’s a weeper, Mum’s making a bucket list of all the “fun” stuff they should do before the due date hits and “I’m not ME any more” and Dad’s asking her “Will you marry me?” And Mum’s reply?

“Not in a million years!”

What DO you call a “having a baby” comedy with a “threesome” fantasy and a character named “Preggophile Brian?”

Call it “Baby Done,” and call it damned adorable, for starters.

This Rose Matafeo farce is light on its feet and quick with a quip, and it’s all about an arborist — which we call “Tree Surgeons” in the States — getting pregnant just before the world tree climbing championships. She stumbles from not telling anybody she’s expecting to “I can do anything pregnant” denial, or as her BFF Molly (Emily Barclay) puts it, “You’re a baby having a baby!”

Tree climbing to bungee jumping, booking flights to British Columbia to cooking up that threesome that’s on the “wild things we regret not doing” that beau Tim (Matthew Lewis) mentioned and getting kicked out of pre-natal (Called “ante-natal” Down Under) class, these two are hellbent on “having it all” before the “fun” ending arrival of “Speck,” which is what they nickname their fetus.

Zoe calls this the “grace period” of a pregnancy. She’s inventing a new thing.

New Zealand TV star Matafeo is Zoe, whose denial starts with the test administered by the obstetrics nurse.

“I Googled it…Usually it’s a tape worm.

“Not a tapeworm. It’s a BABY.”

She hides the news from Tim, her partner in business as well as life. A “gender reveal” shower for their pregnant friends, surrounded by everybody else who’s just had babies, just brings out Zoe’s competitive side.

But Tim picks up on her oddly-distracted visit to the fruit aisle at the market — trying to decide if the grape, plum or pineapple is what’s in her belly at the moment. Next thing you know, they’re springing the news on her folks via a puzzle (a bun, literally, in the oven) and her OB-GYN dad (Fasitua Amosa) is slinging jargon and acronyms at her — “What’s your LMP (Last Menstrual Period)?”

Mum (Loren Taylor) just notes that having a baby “doesn’t suit you.” And their trials have just begun.

Matafeo just bubbles off the screen here, a cluelessly confidant young woman just oozing snark and misguided notions of how “This changes nothing.

Lewis makes a fine straight man for her to bounce off of. And throughout the picture, little bon bon character turns abound — annoyed nurses, flummoxed friends and of course, “Preggophile Brian” (Nic Sampson). Don’t ask.

“Baby Done” doesn’t cover a lot of new ground in the “We’re having a baby. What do we DO?” genre. But it covers that ground aloft — in trees, jumping off cliffs, picking fights at ante-natal classes — so much so that the entire affair is light as a feather, and just as ticklish.

MPA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Rose Matafeo, Matthew Lewis, Emily Barclay, Nic Sampson, Fasitua Amosa and Loren Taylor

Credits: Directed by Curtis Vowell, script by Sophie Henderson. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:31

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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