Three Men and a Little Lady (1990)

Director: Emile Ardolino

Cast: Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson, Nancy Travis

Have I Seen It Before?: As I continue my deep dive into the pulsating wormhole that is Disney+, I am particularly struck by the clear memories I have of seeing this movie in the theaters. Is anyone else having this strange nostalgia epiphany as they dig into the deeper corners of the app?

Did I like it?: In most ways, this probably unneeded sequel to Three Men and a Baby (1987) either meets or exceeds the promise of the original. The storyline—involving the mother (Travis) the Little Lady nee Baby potentially marrying a director friend, thus tearing asunder the commune they have built in New York—actually fits with the setting far more than the hare-brained heroin-smuggling scheme that nudges events along in the original. Danson had been previously relegated to playing a version of Sam Malone in the original, whereas in this film his Jack Holden is far weirder than the movie might otherwise want him to be. Sure, the sight of Tom Selleck being the front man to Danson’s rapping is something I’m not sure any human needed to see, but the chemistry of the three leads is still easy and breezy, and that’s all the poster is interested in selling us.

My only problem with the whole thing is:

Why is Steve Guttenberg here?

This is not to say that the actor is unpleasant to watch. He’s just as charming as Selleck or Danson. I’m asking why his character, Michael Kellam, still feels the need to live with and help raise a child with whom he has very little actual connection? Danson plays the biological father, him I get sticking around. Selleck bonded with the child early on in the first film, and the story of the film runs on the notion that he is in love with the mother. That’s great. Does Guttenberg’s character not have a life outside of the other characters? No other identity? It almost makes the film an existential horror film, if we view the proceedings from his point of view. If we are ever to see the occasionally threatened Three Men and a Bride, and these characters are still living together, the film would almost have to be directed by Ari Aster, wouldn’t it?

Three Men and a Baby (1987)

Director: Leonard Nimoy (no, really)

Cast: Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson, Nancy Travis

Have I Seen It Before?: Yep!

Did I like it?: I would watch the three stars of this film do almost anything. Well, I’d watch Ted Danson do anything. I’d watch Tom Selleck do most things, besides guest star on Friends, which I just can’t anymore. I usually only get interested in Guttenberg if he’s paired with a wise-cracking robot.

At any rate, the film uses the amiable chemistry between the three leads to fuel its way through a heroin smuggling storyline that is completely and totally abandoned by the time the third act begins.

Goddamn, this movie is weird. And that’s before we even get to the ghost.

A long since debunked urban legend posits that just beyond the curtains in a scene with Danson, the specter of a young boy with a shot gun. Back in days when humanity had any sort of credulity left, the legend about the image grew to suggest that the set of the apartment shared by the titular men was occupied and quickly vacated by a family whose son had shot himself.

It’s a really dumb mystery because this fabled ghost is clearly a carboard of Danson himself. It’s not even kind of hard to figure it out. No wonder we as a society need snopes.com.

The much truer mystery is how Leonard Nimoy came to direct such an otherwise workmanlike comedy that is so much of its age. Did Disney read the script and say that the man behind Spock was the only one who could bring this story to life for an American audience? Why would Nimoy be interested in it? He had always expressed an interest in allowing actors mostly identified for the television roles to play against type, but there are very few parts of Jack Holden (Danson) that aren’t Sam Malone at their core, especially when we’ve been allowed to see the menagerie of weirdos that he has played in recent years. Maybe <Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)> was the most successful fish-out-of-water comedy in recent years, and the Mouse House was willing to ignore the spaceships and whales.

Either way, it boggles the mind, and regardless it speaks to Nimoy’s talents as director that he was able to pull off such a perfectly watchable film.