BABY'S DAY OUT
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Joe Mantegna, Lara Flynn Boyle, Joe Pantoliano, Brian Haley, Adam & Jacob Worton. Screenplay: John Hughes. Director: Patrick Read Johnson.
Just as a little role playing exercise, pretend you're John Hughes. The HOME ALONE films have grossed somewhere in the neighborhood of a gazillion dollars, and you're not convinced that particular cow has been fully milked. Unfortunately, Macaulay Culkin has crossed the line from adorable moppet to gawky adolescent, and last year's variation on the theme, DENNIS THE MENACE, didn't do well enough to warrant a sequel. So what do you do? Apparently, you write and produce BABY'S DAY OUT, yet another kiddie-pleaser featuring copious cartoon mayhem directed at bad guys. Strangely, though, there is a modicum of originality present, thanks to imaginative visual effects and the charmed wanderings of Baby Bink.
Baby Bink (twins Adam & Jacob Worton) is the 9-month-old son of the wealthy Cotwells (Lara Flynn Boyle, Matthew Glave), self- absorbed socialites whose primary concern is getting Bink's picture in the paper. To that end they hire a photographer, but the three men (Joe Mantegna, Joe Pantoliano and Brian Haley) who show up at the Cotwell mansion have other plans for Bink ... plans that include a $5 million ransom. Of course, getting the ransom requires actually having the baby, and when Bink slips out through a window to explore New York, the three hapless kidnappers find themselves perpetually chasing down the little tyke, and racking up a growing injury count in the process.
For anyone who has seen either HOME ALONE or its carbon copy sequel, there is very little new to be found in BABY'S DAY OUT. Joe Pesci has been replaced by Joe Mantegna, and Daniel Stern has been split into Joe Pantoliano and comic Brian Haley. Mantegna appears embarrassed much of the time, making his slow burn look like a plea for sympathy from the audience. The scenes of the three villains being thwarted in their attempts to re-acquire Bink are a parade of Wile E. Coyote routines, most recognizably a shot of Haley dropping from a great height to produce a small plume of dust; director Patrick Read Johnson at times seems to cop more liberally from Chuck Jones than from John Hughes. Still, there are only so many ways that the male genitalia can be mangled before intense boredom sets in. I heard gales of laughter from kids in my audience at such mid-section humor, but I think they would have responded the same to a 90 minute loop of kicks to the groin.
What is most annoying about films like BABY'S DAY OUT is that they pretend to have an emotional message. In one scene, Lara Flynn Boyle tearfully acknowledges her misplaced priorities when the kidnapped Bink does appear in the paper, and later comforts Bink's distraught nanny by admitting that the nanny is probably more of a mother to Bink than herself. But BABY'S DAY OUT is no more about good parenting than SPEED is about traffic safety. Hughes and Johnson make no attempt to follow up these token gestures with any closure; it's just typical Hughesian troweled-on emotion to make the violence more palatable.
If there is one reason for anyone of driving age to sit through BABY'S DAY OUT, it is to see the clever special effects which allow Bink to survive every adventure with nary a smudge of dirt to tell the tale. One sequence finds him crawling across a busy street as cars whiz by in every lane but the one he happens to be in. Later, he makes his way through a construction site in Rube Goldberg fashion, sitting blissfully as tractors roll over him and sliding down girders onto moving elevators. These are fun moments, made all the more appealing by the adorable Wortons as Bink.
Naturally, Hughes ends BABY'S DAY OUT with a teaser for a sequel. But enough is enough, John. The Wortons are probably two by now; that doesn't mean you can squeeze four more films out of them.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 babies: 4.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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