Baby Boom (1987) * * *

Directed by:  Charles Shyer

Starring:  Diane Keaton, Sam Shepard, Sam Wanamaker, James Spader, Harold Ramis, Victoria Jackson, Pat Hingle

Baby Boom was released so long ago, the high-powered advertising executives didn't have, gasp, computers on their desks.    They got the work done, but it is disconcerting to see all of those papers flying around the office.    In many ways, Baby Boom is like a time capsule of the 80's yuppie culture, with J.C. Wiatt (Keaton) as the yuppie executive who works "from 5 to 9" and whose relationship with her live-in boyfriend (Ramis) has all the spark of a burned-out light bulb.    J.C. is on the fast track to a partnership at the advertising firm where she essentially lives, but then her British cousin dies and bequeaths her with a toddler named Elizabeth, who is irresistibly cute.

J.C. isn't the motherly type at first, and wants nothing more than to have this child out of her way, but just as Elizabeth is ready to be adopted by stern, no-nonsense farmers who want to name her Fern, J.C. decides to keep the kid and try and juggle her newfound motherhood with the high demands of her career.    Her boyfriend moves out shortly after she decides to keep the baby.   Her boss Fritz Curtis (Wanamaker) isn't exactly sympathetic.   ("I don't even know how many grandchildren I have, but I have this firm making $200 million a year,")   With a younger, childless, male upstart (Spader) slowly usurping J.C.'s power at the office, she soon finds herself without a job and moving to a rustic country house in Vermont.

It isn't a terrible thing to lose your job and have enough cash on hand to buy fifty acres in rural Vermont, but J.C. finds she can't handle the quietness.    Her house is falling apart and her well is drying up.  The only available man under sixty in the whole county is the affable veterinarian Dr. Jeff Cooper (Shepard), who likes J.C. in his own aw-shucks, charming way.    But, she wants out of Vermont and finds a way to do so by marketing the applesauce she made during the long boring days in the country.

Diane Keaton is not the first person who springs to mind when the words "determined career woman" are uttered, but because she is an actress of limitless appeal, she of course makes it work.    Baby Boom isn't a hard-boiled look at careerism vs. parenting.   In J.C.'s case, she winds up having it all, even though Fritz tells her she can't.   Many women of lesser means likely can't say the same thing. 
Baby Boom is a charming, sweet comedy in which J.C. transforms from career-obsessed to parenting-obsessed over the course of 100 minutes.   It scratches the surface of the issues it brings up, but doesn't delve too deep.    Her climactic speech in a board room of executives interested in purchasing her fledgling applesauce company takes a stand for women who want to have it all, but I don't know.... that compensation package didn't sound half bad.