Reboot culture continues to run rampant, sinking its sharp claws into everything beloved, so this news is, by and large, fine: Look Who’s Talking, the movie about a baby who talks like an adult in his head, is getting a remake.
Deadline reports that the reimagined version of the 1989 classic will be written and directed by Jeremy Garelick, who’s also part of American High, a production company that owns a high school in Syracuse and hopes to create John Hughes-esque movies for “currently fossilizing adults” who grew up in the golden age of the R-rated teen dramas. The reboot will ideally “allow for a diverse cast,” he says, and is still in its early stages. That leaves just enough time to make sure that Garelick addresses some, if not all, of the pressing issues, questions, and desires for the reboot.
Garelick’s participation in a production company that traffics in Gen X nostalgia bodes well—he has the chops to stay true to the delightful stupidity of a toddler thinking in Bruce Willis’s voice, so that’s great. But how on Earth will he “modernize” a story that, in 2019, would end in abortion and be the B-plot of a particularly edgy rom-com? Here are the opening credits of the 1989 film, which, as Jezebel’s Hazel Cills pointed out, could be read as pro-life? Help.
The sperm are talking to each other and then at some point, the egg talks. The babies also talk, as soon as they exit the womb.Aside from this issue, which is clearly a setup for the gag of the film—talking babies—everything else about the movie is perfect. I would not change a thing, including Kirstie Alley’s late-’80s maternity wear.
John Travolta as a cab driver with an “I’m driving, heah” affect and a heart of gold? Beautiful. Every outfit Kirstie Alley wears is sublime, and the details of her shitty boss’s big corner office are embedded in my memory forever. Smoked glass! That big sculpture thing that Mikey (the baby) broke! Kirstie Alley, one hundred months pregnant, eating chips, and later, smooshing a poopy diaper onto the aforementioned desk. A dream.The talking baby in the original doesn’t actually “talk,” in the sense that his mouth doesn’t move (we just hear his thoughts), which is fun and also the correct way to pull this off. Imagine the horror of a CGI mouth moving on a real baby’s face. Imagine Ally McBeal’s dancing baby, updated slightly for 2019, moving and talking and screaming, voiced by Channing Tatum.