Movie Review: Babies
The task of a documentarian is to capture real life events and use them to tell a story. One cannot simply find a subject (or in this case four subjects), follow them around for a while, slap the footage together and then call it a movie.
Film is art, not science. What “director” Thomas Balmes accomplishes with Babies is a successful gathering and organizing of data. He amasses collection of footage and presents his findings, but does not create anything. In order for his footage to become a movie, he needs to — through editing, narration, score, etc – form a narrative around his subject. He has to share an artistic vision, a task he fails to achieve; I’m not even sure he tried.
Like most babies, the babies of Babies are pretty cute and do some cute things. Bayar’s (Mongolia) rivalry with his older brother is good for a few laughs. It’s interesting to see how early Ponijao (Namibia) begins learning tribal traditions. Mari (Japan) is a lucky kid; her play dates and trips to the zoo would make any toddler jealous. And, of course, Hattie’s San Franciscan parents are total hippies, subjecting her to songs about taking care of Mother Earth. These scenes offer the potential for a careful and thought-provoking exploration of the similarities and differences between cultures. Unfortunately, Blames doesn’t do much with it.
Instead he decides to fill his movie with completely unnecessary filler. I swear, at least 15 minutes of this 80 minute picture are dedicated to feeding the 4 kids. Another 10 feature various bodily functions. Then there’s the cat-petting montage. And we get plenty of random crying.
There is no cohesiveness to this movie. It is a series of random moments, strung together with no common theme except that they feature babies. There is no reason to care about the events on screen, as they hold no weight within the greater context of the film.
While some of those individual moments can be adorable, the film as a whole was incredibly uninspiring and ultimately quite boring. I really don’t understand why this was released theatrically; it would have been better utilized as programming for TLC.
