JACK AND SARAH

REVIEWED BY MAGGIE STARR

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: sexual implications

Rated:

Jack (Richard E. Grant), a successful British lawyer, and his wife Sarah are expecting their first baby. As the due date grows closer, their excitement and anxiety mounts; their elegant townhouse has just been refinished, they’ve attended all of the Lamaze classes, decorated the nursery, and the only thing left to do is wait. Finally, it’s time: Sarah prods Jack to wake him and he immediately panics. Grabbing his clothes from off a chair, he tries to dress while running downstairs -- taking a tumble in the process and knocking himself unconscious. When he awakens, things will never be the same again...

A few days later Jack opens his eyes to find himself in a hospital room. He dazedly asks to see his wife and newborn ... but receives a staggering reply: while he is the father of a beautiful baby girl, his beloved wife died while giving birth. This shock is more than Jack can handle; extremely depressed, he shuns all society, leaving his parents and Sarah’s widowed mother to care for the child. After weeks of seclusion, Jack ’s family decides that he needs to face reality –- it will be painful, but the wound will never heal as long as he continues to deny his daughter’s existence. One morning, while Jack is asleep, his mother “breaks into” the house bringing the baby along with her. She places the infant in Jack’s arms, and tiptoes out, hoping for the best.

When Jack finds the little one lying there next to him, his first reaction is utter distress ... which quickly turns to affection. Who can resist such adorable smiles? Not having any supplies on hand, he dresses the baby in one of his work shirts, complete with a sock for a hat (“It’s clean,” he promises), and places her into a grocery sack. Everyone is relieved to see he’s accepted the responsibility of fatherhood, but after a few weeks of bringing “Sarah” (for so the baby was named) to work, his well-meaning relatives step in once more: Shouldn’t he hire a nanny?

Thus begins the search; they interview several strait-laced British Nannies, but Jack doesn’t care for any of them. It seems things are at a stalemate until one day when Jack takes little Sarah to a restaurant, and meets Amy (Samantha Mathis), a pretty, young, American waitress, who -- thanks to the two of them -- suddenly finds herself out a job. Without further ado, Jack hires Amy to be Sarah's nanny. She’s eager to begin, but Jack’s going to be in for a surprise when he discovers that she knows even less than he does about babies! Even more surprising, Amy assumes the position includes room and board, and arrives for the first day of work with all her worldly goods scattered on his doorstep. The grandparents are very dismayed when they hear that he hired a “horrid American girl” instead of a “proper English Nanny” and can’t resist giving the independent Amy an abundance of unwelcome advice. Jack too is disturbed by Amy’s unusual childcare methods... but if he fires her, she’ll have no place to go... and to make matters worse, it looks like Amy’s falling in love with her new employer! Will Jack ever get his life straightened out?

This could have been a very sweet (albeit predictable) British romantic comedy if the filmmakers hadn’t felt the need to add a lot of unnecessary rubbish. Although I was really pleased with the way Jack handled Amy’s plans to move in, her troublesome ex-boyfriend, Alain, barges into the house days afterward, convinced that she and Jack are “sleeping together” (which Amy neither denies nor affirms -– though the viewer knows that they aren’t). Still more unsettling, Amy’s best friend Susan is shown romping around with Alain, with both of them dressed only in sheets (thankfully, that scene is brief). We later hear that the unmarried Susan is expecting, but this turns out to be a “false alarm.” After his wife’s death, Jack and a friend (Ian McKellen) drink heavily, and the friend is completely drunk in another scene. Jack almost walks in while Amy is bathing but catches himself in time (the viewer gets a few glimpses of her bare back anyway).

Worst of all is when Amy catches Jack kissing his girlfriend rather passionately after a date; they engage in a short but suggestive dialogue on his expectations of the relationship, all of which the outraged girlfriend hears over the baby-monitor. Jack and Sarah is rated PG for “thematic elements, mild sensuality and language.” It’s an enjoyable bit of fluff, but I would think carefully before turning it on with young ones in the room.