Micki + Maude

Micki + Maude is a 1984 American romantic comedy directed by Blake Edwards, in which television reporter Rob Salinger (Dudley Moore) becomes a bigamist married to two pregnant women, Micki (Ann Reinking) and Maude (Amy Irving), who do not know about each other. It was released by Columbia Pictures on December 21, 1984, runs 118 minutes, and is rated PG-13.^{1 • 2}

Production

Origins of the script. The film reunited Edwards and Moore five years after their hit 10 (1979). Unlike most of Edwards' previous productions, he did not originate the script, which was the screenwriting debut of the playwright Jonathan Reynolds. Reynolds said in a December 1984 interview that he first thought the concept, a bigamist with two pregnant wives, was "unworkable"; to make Rob appealing he emphasized the character's love of children and devotion to both marriages. Edwards contributed more sweetness to the script, slowed the farce's pace, and moved the setting from New York City to Los Angeles, where shooting was less expensive.¹

Shooting. Principal photography was set to begin April 2, 1984, on location in Los Angeles and on soundstages at Laird Studios in Culver City, with additional filming at GMT Studios, Holmby Park, the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and Malibu.¹ A crew member's later recollection describes an unusually relaxed set at Holmby Park, with Edwards arriving late in the morning and shooting few takes.¹¹

Casting and title. Moore recommended Amy Irving for the part of Maude; according to Barbra Paskin's 2000 biography of Moore, he was an admirer of her work and would have pursued a romance had she not been married to Steven Spielberg at the time.³ Irving learned the cello for the role and attended Lamaze classes to prepare for the delivery scenes.¹² For Reinking, a dancer known for All That Jazz, the role of Micki was her first time playing a non-dancing character in a feature film.¹ A September 1984 trade brief reported that Edwards changed the spelling "Mickey" to "Micki" in the title to signal that the character was female; Columbia considered an Easter 1985 release before settling on December 21, 1984.¹³

Reception

Box office. The film opened on December 21, 1984, in 794 theaters with $2,742,458, peaked at number 3 in its fourth week (January 11 to 17, 1985, in 876 theaters), and finished with a domestic gross of $26,080,861 against an estimated budget of $15,100,000.^{4 • 3}

Critics. Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013 and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, gave the film four stars, writing that Moore's "absolutely and unquestioned sincerity" keeps the bigamy premise from turning cruel, and placed the film alongside 10 and Arthur (1981) as screwball classics.¹⁴ Pauline Kael of The New Yorker called it a small screwball farce and praised the timing of Moore and Irving.¹⁵ Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post found the movie funny but "darkly disturbing," and judged Reinking's performance the film's biggest flaw.⁹ David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor noted a draggy first half-hour but credited the film's compassion and its refusal of gender stereotypes.¹⁶ On aggregate, the film holds a 70% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metascore of 64 on Metacritic, where eight of eleven critic reviews were positive.^{2 • 6}

Awards. At the 1985 Golden Globe Awards the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and Dudley Moore won Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.⁵

Themes

Several reviewers read the film as an unusually warm treatment of Edwards' recurring subject of marital infidelity. Attanasio argued that in Micki and Maude the urge to cheat is bound up with the urge to have children, and that the final image of Rob with his babies carries an unsettling undertone.⁹ Sterritt observed that the characters stumble into their situations through love rather than callousness, and that the film's family life holds no gender-role traps: the men enjoy caring for children and the women are first-class professionals.¹⁶ Time Out's retrospective review highlighted the escalating panic of the double-life premise, culminating in the adjacent delivery rooms, and noted the film's absence of the sourness of Edwards' earlier comedies 10 and S.O.B.¹⁷

References

1. Micki + Maude (1984), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. Micki & Maude, Rotten Tomatoes
3. Micki + Maude (1984), IMDb
4. Micki + Maude, Box Office Mojo
5. Micki & Maude, Golden Globes Awards Database
6. Micki + Maude critic reviews, Metacritic
7. Micki + Maude (1984) - Plot, IMDb
8. Micki and Maude feature, Statesman/Alternatives, December 5, 1984 (SUNY repository)
9. Paul Attanasio, "Fooling Around: Dudley Moore in 'Micki and Maude'," The Washington Post, December 20, 1984
10. MICKI & MAUDE, Sony Pictures Entertainment
11. Mike Bonifer, "So, Blake Edwards, Was It All Worth It?", TheWrap, December 17, 2010
12. Joe Brown, "'Micki and Maude': Double Trouble," The Washington Post, November 29, 1984
13. Micki + Maude, AFI Catalog (history and sources page)
14. Roger Ebert, "Micki + Maude," Chicago Sun-Times (rogerebert.com)
15. Pauline Kael, "Lovers and Fools," The New Yorker, January 21, 1985
16. David Sterritt, "Slapstick -- and substance," The Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 1985
17. Micki + Maude review, Time Out

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1980s › Comedy-dramas of the 1980s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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