| 'Whose Baby is in the Classroom (?)' (1968) is a lesser, Inoue Umetsugu (Jin Shang Mei Zi)-directed, Shaw Brothers-produced film; from some sources, I've heard that this is the last film that Peter Chen Ho appeared in (he passed away from colon cancer in 1970). This flick puts more emphasis on slapstick humor and melodrama and less on musical numbers. 'Whose Baby...' still contains some solid acting from Chen Ho, Li Ching, Ouyang Sha Fei (among others), decent locations filmed in Umetsugu's home country of Japan, and an engaging, albeit cliche-filled story (then again, that's typical of the director). Peter Chen Ho portrays a chemistry teacher who goes to see a doctor. In the clinic's waiting room, a mother leaves her infant son with Chen Ho while she goes to the washroom. Unfortunately, the mother doesn't return! Now, Chen Ho's character must secretly look after the baby while juggling his work at an all-girls boarding school. While teaching his students about what chemicals to use for making cold cream and other such stuff, Chen Ho partially transforms his laboratory into a nursery for the baby. Chen Ho also runs into his old flame, portrayed by lovely, "Baby Queen" Li Ching, who is now a stern, comely professor nicknamed, "The Rock". When Chen Ho's students and the school faculty have suspicions about the baby sounds coming from his lab, what is Peter Chen Ho's character to do?
This effort from Inoue Umetsugu was less satisfying, but it still had some moments. Peter Chen Ho's character deals with his surpressed libido in an uncomfortable scene where the cameras pan in on the legs and clothed breasts of the female students. The slapstick humor still manages to please, though. Chen Ho tries to find milk for the baby on a farm near the road. When all he can find are bulls (I wonder if the Farley brothers saw this film's dyspeptic gag as inspiration for one in 'Kingpin'? The gag in this film is nowhere as crude, though), the farmers start chasing him while wielding farm tools! They assume that he's bothering the cattle! I laughed my @#$ off when Peter Chen Ho accidentally wanders into a room where the girls are reporting for a physical (Peter Chen Ho tries to cover his eyes for the sake of decency)! An uptight faculty member swats a broom against Chen Ho's head! When Chen Ho gets hit in the back of his head, he uses his hands to block the broom that's hitting the back of his noggin, but in the process, he has to uncover his eyes! This process repeats itself until two students help him find his way out of the room. It looks funnier than it sounds. As a less fickle, more conservative professor, Li Ching still looks pretty damned sweet! If my eyes had a pancreas, it would go into shock from her sweet, lovely complexion! Anyway, her performance was quite solid. On the other hand, director Inoue Umetsugu could've done a lot more with this film. There may be some potential spoilers here. There's a subplot about a student who wants to commit suicide (the student is the mother of the baby; the principal's son got her pregnant and she may have to drop out of school); the filmmakers could've done much more with stuff like this. There's still some well written lines like, "Sex is meaningless without love." I guess in order to keep a light tone, the narrative had to go in a sappy, unrealistic, and upbeat direction. Oh, well. The musical numbers are small-scale and they sound nice , but they aren't too memorable. 'Whose Baby is in the Classroom' isn't one of Umetsugu's best (well, to be honest, I have only seen a few of his films), but it's a nice, lightweight film that manages to please to some extent. |
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