3 Men and a Little Lady (1990)

Written by CinemaSerf on December 31, 2023

Despite the best efforts of Fiona Shaw as the sex-maniac "Miss Lomax" this is really a rather poor follow-up to the original. The child, "Mary" - who is now five (clearly nobody realised that 1990-1987 = well, not five, anyway) has relocated with her mother "Sylvia" (the shockingly wooden Nancy Travis) to live in the UK with fiancé and film director "Edward" (Christopher Cazenove). Of course "Jack" (Ted Danson), "Michael" (Steve Guttenburg) and "Peter" (Tom Selleck) start to miss their playful little wean - with one of them also realising just how madly in love he is with her mother. They have to get to Britain urgently to thwart the nuptials and to get "Mary", the spoilt and very annoying "Mary", back from the clutches of their cut-glass speaking rival. Someone, somewhere, clearly decided that giving this nonsense a British slant might increase it's appeal - to, at least, open up an whole new slew of stereotypes for it to bash. If it's not the accents, it's the doddery curate or the motor-cycle and sidecar - indeed nothing is off limits as this plunders the puerile and contrived to string out this weakest of storylines for almost 1¾ hours of increasingly cringemaking "comedy". The proposed wedding scene at the conclusion just needed a gattling gun after about ten minutes. Sorry, perhaps I just wasn't in the mood but I didn't love the first of these and this is a poor relation. Please. No more!!