Three Men and a Cradle is a 1985 French comedy film by Coline Serreau. The film was remade in Hollywood as Three Men and a Baby in 1987, which subsequently inspired nine adaptations in seven languages.

Plot

Jacques, Pierre, and Michel, three bachelors, share a spacious apartment in the heart of Paris. One evening, during a party held in their apartment, Jacques, a professional steward, agrees to act as a courier for a package that a friend will deliver to him the next day. With little time to inform his friends, he departs for the Far East for several weeks. Upon the arrival of the "package", Jacques' roommates discover it's a baby, seemingly Jacques' daughter, sent by her mother, Sylvia, citing her work commitments as preventing her from caring for the child. Reluctantly, the two friends, unaccustomed to the responsibilities of parenthood, find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of caring for an infant—feeding, changing diapers, and enduring sleepless nights. One morning, two individuals come to claim the "package". Initially relieved, they hand over the cradle, only to realize moments later that the actual "package" awaited by the men was delivered by the caretaker days earlier, containing illicit drugs. Pierre and Michel narrowly rescue little Marie but must now swiftly return the drugs to menacing traffickers, all while under constant police surveillance. Through ingenuity and audacity, they manage to dispose of the incriminating cargo. Upon Jacques' return from his travels, the baby is reunited with her mother, and to their own surprise, the absence of the child leaves a void in their lives. However, the child's mother eventually brings her back to the roommates, marking the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of the three men as they adapt to caring for the baby.

Cast

Sequel

A sequel film by Serreau, with the same characters, the same actors and called 18 ans après (18 Years After) was released in 2003.

Reception

Critical response

Three Man and a Cradle has an approval rating of 72% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 18 reviews, and an average rating of 6.2/10. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Accolades

Remakes

Trois hommes et un couffin was remade by Hollywood in English as Three Men and a Baby in 1987. The American adaptation itself was imitated by two Filipino films: Wake Up Little Susie (1988) and Rock-a-Bye Baby (1988), and was subsequently adapted into several Indian films, including Baalache Baap Brahmachaari (1989) in Marathi, Thoovalsparsham (1990) in Malayalam which was then remade as Chinnari Muddula Papa (1990) in Telugu, Thayamma (1991) and Asathal (2001) in Tamil, Heyy Babyy (2007) in Bollywood and Tatlı Bela (2018) in Turkish.