Blake Edwards was always at his absolute best when he was backing himself into a corner where the only way out was pure, unadulterated absurdity. By 1984, the man had already given us the slapstick mayhem of the Pink Panther movies and the Hollywood satire of S.O.B., but Micki & Maude might be one of his most deeply chaotic setups. It's a comedy about a guy who gets two women pregnant at the exact same time, panics, marries them both, and then spends the next hour and a half trying to keep them from finding out while managing two wildly different domestic lives.
If you pitched that script today, it would probably get tossed out the window before you even finished the logline, or at the very least, it would be turned into a dark, gritty psychological thriller about a pathologically dishonest liar. But back in the mid-80s, with Dudley Moore in the lead role, it somehow becomes a breezy, hysterical, and surprisingly charming farce. It shouldn't work. The protagonist is, on paper, an absolute nightmare of a husband. Yet, through sheer kinetic energy and Moore's unique brand of sweat-soaked panic, the movie actually manages to land.
Moore plays Rob Salinger, a television news reporter stuck doing ridiculous fluff pieces for a local network in Los Angeles. He's married to Micki, played by Ann Reinking, who is a wildly successful corporate lawyer on the fast track to a judgeship. Rob desperately wants a baby, but Micki is entirely focused on her career and isn't particularly interested in slowing down to start a family. Their marriage isn't terrible, but there's a distinct distance between them, mostly driven by Rob's growing desperation for a kid and Micki's relentless work schedule.
Enter Maude, played by Amy Irving. Rob meets her while covering a story on her father, a world-champion cellist. Maude is a cellist herself, younger, softer, and far more open to the quiet domestic life Rob thinks he wants. Naturally, they hit it off, a brief affair begins, and before Rob even has time to process what he's doing, Maude drops the bomb that she is pregnant. Rob, overwhelmed by guilt and genuine excitement about becoming a dad, decides the only honorable thing to do is divorce Micki and marry Maude.
Except, right before he can break the news to Micki, she surprises him with her own announcement: she's pregnant, too.
This is the exact moment the movie shifts into high gear. Instead of coming clean to either woman, Rob makes the disastrous, completely illogical decision to stay married to Micki while secretly marrying Maude in a quiet ceremony elsewhere. What follows is a masterclass in modern farce. Rob sets up a life split between two different houses, constantly making up ludicrous excuses about work assignments, network overnights, and long-form investigative reports to explain his prolonged absences to both wives.
Dudley Moore is the engine that keeps the whole thing running. His body language alone carries half the jokes in the second act. He isn't playing a cool, calculating bigamist who thinks he's smooth enough to pull off two wives; he plays a man who is constantly on the absolute verge of a complete nervous breakdown. He's sweating, stammering, sprinting up and down stairs, and frantically changing outfits in the front seat of his car. You can practically hear his pulse hammering in every scene. The physical comedy here is classic Blake Edwards stuff, relying heavily on timing, slamming doors, and near-misses where the two women almost cross paths.
What makes the movie interesting, though, is the contrast between the two female leads. Ann Reinking brings a crisp, sharp-witted elegance to Micki. She's a woman who is completely in control of her professional world, which makes Rob's desperate attempts to pull the wool over her eyes feel even more foolish. Amy Irving, on the other hand, plays Maude with a warm, gentle groundedness. She gives the character a real heart, making her feel like a genuine person caught in a bizarre situation rather than a simple plot device.
The tragic comic irony of the story is that Rob isn't inherently malicious. He genuinely loves both of these women, and he's hopelessly in love with the idea of being a father to both of their children. His biggest flaw isn't cold-hearted deceit, it's an utter lack of a backbone. He can't bear to disappoint either of them, so he picks the option that guarantees maximum catastrophe down the line. It's a very human kind of cowardice, which is probably why the audience doesn't completely turn on him five minutes into the second act.
Of course, a premise like this can only stretch so far before the dam has to burst, and Edwards wisely saves his best set piece for the final act. Both Micki and Maude go into labor at the exact same time, at the exact same hospital, on the exact same floor. The sequence that follows is pure, chaotic gold. Rob is running back and forth between two delivery rooms, changing scrubs, inventing wildly convoluted excuses for why he keeps disappearing, and trying to support two women who are actively going through labor just down the hall from one another.
The hospital scene is where Moore's physical commitment pays off completely. He looks genuinely exhausted, totally unhinged, and completely at the mercy of the situation he built for himself. The doctors and nurses are entirely confused by this maniac darting in and out of room numbers, and the escalation of noise, shouting, and physical slapstick hits a fever pitch that feels like classic 1930s screwball comedy updated for 1980s multiplexes.
Looking back at it now, the movie is very much a product of its era. The fashion, the Los Angeles interiors, the synthesized score, and the underlying sexual politics are all aggressively 1984. It deals with bigamy in a way that feels surprisingly light, almost cartoonish at times, which might frustrate viewers looking for a grounded exploration of marital infidelity. But if you accept the movie on its own terms, as a high-concept comedy about a man drowning in his own bad choices, it works extraordinarily well.
The script, written by Jonathan Reynolds, keeps the dialogue fast and key character beats tight. It doesn't waste time trying to justify Rob's behavior with deep psychoanalysis, nor does it turn Micki or Maude into caricatures just to make Rob look better. They feel like capable, intelligent women who simply made the mistake of trusting a guy who couldn't bring himself to tell the truth when it mattered most.
If you enjoy classic physical comedy, mid-80s Hollywood studio productions, or just watching Dudley Moore lose his mind for two hours, this one is definitely worth a look. The film will be available to own on 7/28. The blu-ray is part of the retro VHS releases from Alliance, so keep an eye out if you're looking to add a slice of 80s comedy history to your physical media collection.
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