Times and tastes change, but Shirley Jones' warmth and professionalism hold up in this otherwise undistinguished baby-talk comedy. Here she's an American miss in London married to Max Bygraves, a popular mid-century British music hall entertainer whose style dates badly: Pudgy and charmless and with an irritating laugh, he's supposed to be an everyman but comes off like Garry Shandling without the edge. The talking-baby sequences aren't even faked well, the songs are execrable, and even at a trim 90 minutes you keep waiting for the plot to go through its predictable paces and just end. There are satirical targets -- the stock market, psychiatry, the Cold War -- but they're crudely, tritely mocked; and even the supposedly adorable title character is just another tot. Thank goodness for the delectable Barbara Shelley as a femme fatale, and for Shirley -- who, as evidenced by her recent appearance at the Oscars, just gets lovelier.
