Goo Goo Dolls

The cute factor reigns supreme with those darn Babies
By
Morgan P Salvo


What’s the big deal about babies? I ‘m not especially fond of other people’s babies and there’s nothing more torturous than baby home movies. I know they’re cute when they’re little and everyone thinks theirs is the most wonderful of all, but what’s so special about babies? They don’t last long, pretty soon after making a mess of things they grow up and progressively make bigger/different messes until they get to adulthood, Seriously, what’s so special about babies? Who gives a rat’s ass unless they’re your own? I don’t get it.
The new documentary Babies cashes in on the cute and, hopefully, shared fact that we are all enchanted by life’s beginning and how awesome it is to be born while surrounded by a bunch of shit we can’t comprehend. Clearly I was assigned this movie as a cruel joke, but nothing prepared me for how truly bad this flick would be.
Director Thomas Balmès might have had a good idea originally, capturing the captivating moments of early life from around the world. However, it quickly morphs into nonsensical juxtapositions of baby footage. Done in a non-traditional style, there’s no narration, just images with more gurgling and cooing than dialogue. If it came with commentary like a History Channel or a decent National Geographic doc with some educational info, there might have been something here. But as it stands, Babies feels like all the favorite snapshots of four different babies with no real links to the similarities or vast cultural differences between them.
Going to four corners of the world, Babies follows the early stages of life. We are introduced to Hattie (San Francisco), Mari (Japan), Bayarjargal (Mongolia), and Ponijao, (Namibia). Babies feels unbearably long even at 79 minutes. I kept saying to myself “hey is that Mongolia in the background? I can’t tell---there’s a big freakin’ BABY in the way!” Mainly we see all four babies getting washed, crying, peeing, grinning, crawling, but mostly we see them just staring blankly into space sometimes accompanied by some peppy, incoherent music. By far the star was the African child. Ponijao’s eyes had an intelligence of awareness far superior to most adults.
Even beyond the subject matter, this was a poorly made documentary. When a scene got somewhat close to interesting (which was close to never) it abruptly cut to another scene of over-the-top boring cuteness. The handpicked, random cute stuff included, but was not limited to, belly sucking, tit squirting, fountain-like peeing and baby yoga. Babies didn’t resemble a celebration of life, but rather a home movie that I felt the need to excuse myself from. If I weren’t on assignment, I would’ve gotten up and kept running.
One of the best parts was watching some of the disgusting food some cultures eat, from pans of goat guts to something that resembled an ice-cream meat cone dipped in water.
The most engaging scenes were the ones with pets and babies, but were way too reminiscent of YouTube videos. All the babies seem to have pets. Three of them play with kitties while Ponijao plays with his pet flies. I kept expecting Bob Saget to narrate with baby-talk cartoon-voice. Babies really went downhill when they learned how to make noise. The mass crying provided ample time to for me to squirm and wish I were on another planet.
The crawling times passed quickly and then the babies stood, giving me hope that the torment was over, but nope, it keeps going filling in the black holes with more goo-goo speak and home movie footage. The credits even has an epilogue that shows them “today”, which looks like five minutes later.
French composer Bruno Coulais' ( Coraline, Winged Migration) score uses woodwinds, strings, pans, pots, rattles and anything else he could get his hands on to make this bubbling ethnic pop that is supposed to be jubilant. I guess one might find it uplifting, but to me it sounded like South American pan-flute street music fused with sound effects records.
If you're expecting a baby, once had a baby, or if you have a baby right now you might like Babies. But for other side of the coin if you can't stand, are afraid of, don't get, or are immune to the charms of babies, you will not like Babies. I’m not sure a movie called “tweens” or god forbid “grown-ups” would capture hearts as much as this movie will, but there’s only so much “AWWWWS” a guy can take in one movie. This was beyond torturous. It was by far the most boring movie I have ever seen and the longest 79 minutes spent in my life. One big diaper-less pampers commercial or perhaps one huge ad to adopt an African baby. Babies was just that wrong on so many levels.
With the combination of a concept so poorly delivered, the subject matter so redundant, and the movie so tediously crafted, Babies was my version of a horror movie. Considering after viewing the likes of Dawn of the Dead and Saw, I slept like a baby, but Babies was designed to give me nightmares.




Babies
Starring Babies
Directed by Thomas Balmès
 ½ star

 
  just in case.....