showgirl626 I just discovered this movie the other day for the first time. I was flipping through the menu on my TV, saw the description and decided to look in. I missed the first few minutes, but what I saw kept me watching.While I can see what the detractors of this film saw, I also think the criticism is a bit harsh. I did a lot of smiling, and laughed out loud many times.While the movie was packed to the rafters with British heavyweights, few brought their reputations to the roles, and the characters could have easily been played by someone with less star power. However, the Hugh Laurie / Joely Richardson combination worked for me, and Tom Hollander was over-the-top hilarious, even more so for me only previously knowing him in roles where he plays an uptight starchy elitist.Sure the dialogue was a little stilted and artificial in places, some of the jokes juvenile, and I can definitely see where some reviewers thought it sounded like they were reading pages of text verbatim, but I didn't walk away from the movie regretting having watched it. I liked how it poked fun at the British, the BBC, babymaking in general, and I respect that it dared to poke fun at the sacred cows of pregnancy problems and infertility.It was a little indelicate a times, downright ridiculous more than once, but overall the movie was strong enough to hold my attention, and I was entertained. Though I wasn't entirely satisfied with the end, I think it was better than taking the easy way out and having Laurie and Richardson walking off into the sunset pushing a pram.Better than average? Absolutely. Funny? You bet. Pompous? Yeah, a little of that too, but not a clunker by any stretch of the imagination. I liked it. Call me crazy, but I'd watch it again.Thanks for reading.

junk-monkey If you ever get into an argument about whether writers should be allowed to adapt their own books (based on their own life experiences) for the screen - and then get to direct what they have written, then cite this movie as an example as to why it should never be allowed.The basic premise of the movie is fine: a couple cannot conceive. They undergo IVF. He writes a film script based on the experience without telling her, reading her secret diary to get "the woman's angle". She finds out. They separate but are reconciled.Where the film fails (and this is where my argument about letting writers direct comes in) is in the dialogue. The speeches in this thing are so stodgy. So wordy. Everything sounds like it came straight off the page of the book. Everybody talks all the time in well rounded complete paragraphs. Speeches that might read well on the page of a novel will sound clumsy and stilted if acted without some revision, cutting, some paring down. In real life, people just don't talk like they do in books. In real life, people just don't talk like they do in this movie - not even smug rich London media types. There was no natural rhythm to the conversations and I felt really sorry for the actors having to deliver this stuff, and they had to deliver so much of it. The performances suffered as a result. No one was believable in their characters except maybe Adrian Lester, who has a talent for shining out in bad British movies. He shone out again, solely I suspect by virtue of having some of the shortest lines in the whole thing.The music was pretty dreadful too - especially the moment when, abandoned by his wife, Hugh Laurie has to stand there being miserable with Westlife telling us he's miserable on the soundtrack. WE GET THE MESSAGE!Ben Elton is, famously, one of the father figures of the "Alternative Comedy" boom back in the Eighties which lambasted the cosy unreal clichéd world that British comedy had become. It's sad then to see him turn out this bloated unamusing movie which is about as unfunny, and unconnected from reality as any episode Terry and June (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135736/). It runs for 101 minutes and feels like half that again. The whole movie is about babies, and one thing I do know about babies is they grow up. They become their own people, start to live lives of their own. Elton should have let his baby go. In the hands of a scriptwriter and a director who could step back from the story and take a more objective approach this could have been a really good film.

PhoenixSeraph I was lucky enough to catch this movie on WE last night and at first, yeah there was a lot of sex in it, but the movie wasn't about that. The movie was about two people in love with each other who desperately wanted a baby. I absolutely loved Joely Richardson as Lucy. Her part was probably the most endearing thing about this movie. Everything she writes in her diary--from the Beatrix Potter to why women feel the need to create life--was so eloquently put. I think infertility is a struggle that a lot of women deal with, but it's not something you hear about everyday. I think this movie was refreshingly honest about approaching this subject and I found myself wiping away tears at certain parts.

debk1223 I ran across this movie today on the WE channel. It caught my attention because it had Hugh Laurie in it and I'm a huge fan of his. So I sat down to watch. I'm glad I did. I went through 7 years of trying to conceive and could relate to just about everything the couple was going through. I laughed out loud when Lucy was riding her moped back from the gyno and she had been lubed up and she slipped off the seat. I thought it was very well written. We got to see just how much this couple loved each other. I do think that Lucy blew the whole diary thing out of proportion. Yes she had a right to be angry but to want to throw her whole marriage down the drain seemed a little ridiculous. I would recommend watching it.