Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: 3 Men And A Baby

The reporting of box office grosses has long been a controversial subject. While it’s true that the numbers have little to no bearing on a film’s artistic merit, it can be interesting to see what pictures audiences are choosing to spend their hard-earned cash on. Even more interesting is looking back at the historical record to see what folks were flocking to twenty or thirty years ago. Often it isn’t a huge surprise. It makes sense that Top Gun was the biggest grossing movie of 1986, for example. But then there are years like 1987. For a while, the zeitgeist-defining blockbuster Fatal Attraction was on track to be the highest grosser of the year. But then in November, a family comedy directed by Mr. Spock and starring a couple of TV actors and the guy from the Police Academy movies swept in and took the top spot. I’m at a loss to explain that and I was there. I contributed to its box office success. I do not know what we were thinking.

3 Men And A Baby (or, if you prefer the poster title, Three Men And A Baby) was a remake of a 1985 French comedy called Three Men And A Cradle. The movie was a huge hit and received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Disney snatched up the rights quickly, although they came with a few caveats. The French production company, Flach Film, wanted to coproduce the remake with Touchstone. Furthermore, the original film’s writer/director, Coline Serreau, would direct the American version as well.

That plan did not pan out.