Une fille à croquer

I thought this movie was sweet, and one of the few projects Ricki Lake appeared in that she can be proud of. This movie shows how not to judge a book by it's cover, and that you can love someone and be loved back no matter what size you are or what you look like. A sweet, gentle romantic comedy with a fine script and good acting.

Babycakes is a sweet film, but not nearly as good as the German movie upon which it is based, Percy Adlon's Zuckerbaby (1985). Why does Hollywood persist in making limp retreads of European gems? City of Angels, Three Men & A Baby, Pennies From Heaven, Blame It On Rio, The Vanishing, The Birdcage... Even sitcoms like All In The Family, Sanford & Son and Three's Company are just inferior retreads of Brit originals. To be fair, the Brits tried to remake The Golden Girls, and an unholy mess they made of that too... Sylvester Stallone's forthcoming remake of Get Carter fills me with abject dread. Are there no original ideas in La La Land any more?

I am not a fan of Ricki Lake and Craig Scheffer fails to excite me as well, but put them together in a formulatic love story about a "handsome" man falling for a "fat girl" and it comes to a somewhat entertaining film.

Ricki Lake is Grace, a young, hideously overweight girl who works a secluded job at a funeral parlor, but longs for love and adventure in the real world. Of course, since she is fat(and this is a movie), she isn't getting any and this becomes frustrating, particularly after her new step-mother Wanda points out to her that she needs to lose a lot of weight before she could find love. Humiliated, Grace pretends that she does have a boyfriend "who loves her just the way she is", and now (of course), Wanda and Grace's father want to meet him, so Grace must come up with a man. She manages to find Rob, a handsome young man who truly does seem to like her. After a little bit of persuasion, he agress to visit her family in the guise of her lover, and soon it seems that he is doing more than just pretending. He actually likes Grace!

But there is one hitch...Rob already has a girlfriend, she's just visiting her family and Rob is bored without her and longs for more than the company of his obnoxious friends. Grace and Rob make a fine pair of friends(except for one occasion when Rob's buddies show up and he moves away from Grace, causing her to wail, "you're ashamed to be seen with me"--such stereotypical lines are one of the fallbacks of this film.), but they know it can't last forever, and when his real girlfriend, Olivia, storms in on them, things go from bad to worse. Now what is Grace to do?

I am not the biggest fan of love stories, and the romance between Grace and Rob failed to really interest me, though it was nice of Hollywood to attempt to give hope to the "fat girls" by saying that good looking boys COULD love them. The rest of the film, dealing with Grace's relations to everybody, is less than appealing, as we see that she is judged simply by her weight. This isn't depicted as "right" of course, but the constant preachy lines("nobody knows what it's like to move around in this large body")and the over-blown "prejudices" to Grace get a little tiresome. Particularly grueling is the scene where Olivia does catch Grace and Rob and in a fit of rage begins to hit Grace with her purse while saying things like "you fat, ugly b*&^! You make me SICK!" While most people would have howled with laughter, Lake dramatically falls to the ground, and it becomes hard to tell if she IS laughing hysterically, or sobbing and making a spectacle of herself. A less than underwhelming climactic scene, to say the least in a rather sub-par, though slightly entertaining film.

"Babycakes" is the story of a girl who thought she was an ugly-duckling, and wants to get the most handsome guy she has ever seen (Craig Sheffer, a few years before "A River Runs Through It"). At first put off by her weight, he learns to like her and finds that there is more to her than simply girth.

Ricki Lake is very appealing in this movie. Sure, she was fat, but that only adds to her appeal. I thought she was very attractive in "Babycakes" and this film certainly adds to the message that big women are desirable people too.

Seeing her now only makes me wish she looked like she did in "Babycakes".

I recommend this small movie, especially if you are a romantic. George

No great shakes, but a real nice light romantic comedy. Paul Schneider directs this off beat story of an overly plump cosmetician(Ricki Lake) falling in love with a solidly built subway conductor(Craig Sheffer) who happens to already be spoken for. He is more than willing to spend part of the Christmas season with her while his fiancee is out of town. Are his feelings for real or just pity? There is that little something about this movie that makes you take inventory of your own insecurity and doubts.