“Love doesn’t come in sizes,” we’re assured by Babycakes, which simultaneously teaches us that stalkers do. Ricki Lake could’ve been a size two and her plucky Babycakes protagonist, lovelorn mortician Grace, would’ve still been an XXXL stalker. Requesting a month off work to dedicate herself to the pursuit of a stranger with whom she’s romantically obsessed, Grace goes so far as to don a disguise and infiltrate his boss’s office simply to learn his name.
He is Rob (Craig Sheffer), a motorman for the MTA; she knows this because she watches him at work, much as she watches him everywhere else. Whether he’s ice skating in public or lounging at home with his brittle, mismatched fiancée (Cynthia Dale), Grace is lurking nearby—even with binoculars, from a perch across the street—sighing at his every move, captivated by his mere existence. When men behave like this in made-for-TV movies, we know we’re careening toward a denouement in which our heroine unsteadily raises a gun in self-defense. In Babycakes, all that is raised of Rob goes unseen due to network standards and practices.
Director Paul Schneider (For the Love of Nancy, The Cold Heart of a Killer) and screenwriter Joyce Eliason (Riding the Bus with My Sister) waste no time establishing Grace’s crushing loneliness in this adaptation of Percy Adlon’s Zuckerbaby. It opens with Grace alone in a large pool, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” on the soundtrack. By day, she applies makeup to the recently departed, alongside the anxious and sniveling Keri (Nada Despotovich), her de facto best friend. By night, she binge-eats in front of the TV until she falls asleep. (Your thoughts may wander to Jessica Mitford when her boss removes a hairpiece from the back of a dead woman’s head to save money.)
Her unsympathetic father (John Karlen) and new stepmother Wanda (Betty Buckley) offer unhelpful advice at their wedding, including “Lose a hundred pounds, everything will change.” But Grace intends to seize her happiness much sooner than that. Stalking Rob has convinced her that he’s unhappy in his relationship and ripe for the picking, news she eagerly relays to Keri, who urges her to be realistic. “A guy like that is never gonna be interested in a person like you. I don’t mean that as a putdown. He wouldn’t be interested in me, either,” she observes, curiously bypassing the small matter of whether Rob might be more put off by Grace’s spy games than her weight.
“Are you some sort of detective?” he asks after she contrives a meeting with him and presumptuously orders banana splits for two. She comes on strong, offering to make him dinner and tucking her address into his pocket even after he repeatedly says he can’t come. But things get stranger still on the night of the not-date date, when Grace trashes her apartment in a blind rage because Rob, who declined her invitation, indeed doesn’t show up. What happens when he eventually comes a-knockin’ and drunkenly passes out in her bed could form the basis of a cautionary Afterschool Special.
Call it CPTSD (there’s some trauma in Grace’s past relating to her late mother), call it borderline personality disorder—they go together like the lyrics from a Grease song—but the long and short of it is that Grace’s approach to love isn’t quirky, liberating or radically inspiring. It’s as grim, suffocating and abusive as every other relationship in her life, yet we’re encouraged to applaud such lunacy because her size makes her a lovable underdog. That many viewers remember Babycakes fondly is a testament to Lake’s off-kilter likability, best showcased by John Waters in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Me, I’m just glad we were spared a Kissed scenario, given Grace’s obsessive tendencies and occupation.
More “Babycakes” screenshots will be shared on Instagram this week.
Streaming and DVD availability
Babycakes is currently out-of-print on DVD in North America and isn’t on major streaming platforms, but unauthorized copies circulate on YouTube.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Lisa
So thrilled you finally took on “Babycakes.” I do remember this one, primarily because I had a crush on…Betty Buckley. hahahaha
We can delve into that psychology at some point.
This film was pathetic to watch for the very reasons you aptly write about in the above review.
Once I knew who the screenwriter is/was, it all makes horrible writing sense! “Riding the Bus with my Sister” Yikes. Have you reviewed that one yet? I wasn’t sure.
Some lonely evening, when I’m obsessively checking my blood sugar and saying, “Hmm…maybe I can still have a piece of pie,” I might watch both movies, then promptly trash my house, when my blood sugar rises off the charts after watching both movies.
Again, spot-on review about such a cringeworthy TV movie, well, except for Betty Buckley.
Cranky
Thanks, Lisa! There are at least two more Buckley titles on my list of films to review here: director Claudia Weill’s abortion-centric “Critical Choices” (Weill made “Girlfriends” with Melanie Mayron in ’78) and Judith Light’s “Betrayal of Trust,” about an abusive psychiatrist.
I’ve not yet tackled “Riding the Bus with My Sister” but it has to be done eventually. It was director Anjelica Huston’s involvement with that misguided project that I found most puzzling, though you could also write a lengthy piece about Rosie O’Donnell’s career during that era, what with “The View” and her haiku mania.