It stars Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson as three bachelors as they attempt to adapt their lives to de facto fatherhood with the arrival of the love child of one of the men.

Architect Peter Mitchell, cartoonist Michael Kellam, and actor Jack Holden are happy bachelors in their shared New York apartment, with frequent parties and flings.

Jack is in Turkey shooting a B movie, and makes arrangements with a director friend to have a package delivered to the apartment.

Returning home, they find Mrs. Hathaway bound and gagged and the apartment ransacked by the dealers, but Mary safe; a note threatens, "Next time we'll take the baby".

Peter incapacitates an intruder late at night, who turns out to be Jack, returning early after his movie role was cut.

They receive a news clipping in the mail – Milner has been attacked by the drug dealers and hospitalized – with another threat: "Don't let this happen to you!"

Peter meets with the dealers at the top floor of a construction site while Jack is manning the power breakers to the elevators.

Michael, hidden in the vents, records Peter's conversation with the dealers but loses his balance and falls into the room, and a chase ensues.

Just over an hour into the final cut of the film, there is a scene that shows Jack and his mother (played by Celeste Holm) walking through the home with Mary.

As they do so, they pass a background window on the left-hand side of the screen, and a black outline that appears to resemble a rifle pointed downward can be seen behind the curtains.

The most common version of this myth was that a nine-year-old boy committed suicide with a shotgun there, explaining why it was vacant: because the grieving family left.

The figure is actually a cardboard cutout "standee" of Jack, wearing a tuxedo and top hat, that was left on the set.

It was created as part of the storyline, in which he, an actor, appears in a dog food commercial, but this portion was cut from the final version of the film.

As for the contention that a boy died in the house, all the indoor scenes were shot on a Toronto sound stage, and no kind of residential dwellings were used for interior filming.

The site's consensus reads: "Like the French farce it's based on, Three Men and a Baby is too self-satisfied with scatalogical humor to qualify as a bundle of joy, but the role of makeshift daddy brings out the best in Tom Selleck".

[11] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, despite noting several aspects he saw as flaws, praised the film, remarking: "Because of Selleck and his co-stars... the movie becomes a heartwarming entertainment".

[24] When asked about a reboot of the series, Guttenberg responded that he was not excited about it, saying that the audiences would prefer a sequel as they wanted to be reminded of a "better time.

"[19] While direct inspiration has never been confirmed[failed verification], the television show Baby Daddy, an American sitcom that premiered in 2012 on ABC Family, has been compared to the film.