Films, it must be said, don't come much soppier than this sweet and funny romantic comedy of father-baby love. The eponymous Jack (Grant) loses his lovely wife Sarah (Imogen Stubbs) in childbirth, plunging him into a sea of tears and booze. He won't even see his daughter, Sarah Jnr., until the formidable double act of his mother Judi Dench and mother-in-law Eileen Atkins conspire to abandon him with the naked, squirming, adorable bundle. Naturally, paternal instinct kicks in, triggering a charming, mirthful binge of the helpless pop getting to grips with baby care.
Grant is smashing, wonderfully funny and touching as a grieving man juggling career and infant, with superior back-up from Atkins, Dench, David Swift as his dad and Ian McKellen as the local tramp who moves in to keep house. And writer-director Tim Sullivan has grasped perfectly the irresistibility to women of an attractive man sporting a papoose pouch.
Where this gets iffy, however, is in charting the lengthily predictable progress of romance after the introduction of accident-prone, argumentative and idiotic American nanny Amy (Mathis) with whom bickering will turn, via mutual baby bonding, to love. It's a predictable outcome, and a shame because Jack's relationship with his baby loathing boss (Lunghi) could have been far more interesting.