Honestly, I was looking forward to seeing Babies…I’m a documentary fan and love learning new things or seeing something through a different pair of eyes. However, I didn’t get any of that from Babies. The movie takes a look at the first months of four babies’ lives from four very different spots in the world. From birth to their first steps, we join a baby from Namibia, Japan, Mongolia, and the United States. You get a glimpse at how different cultures raise their young and how babies react differently to the surroundings around them.
My first gripe is the close-up shots. It felt like that’s all these filmmakers knew how to do. I understand they wanted to focus on the baby, but almost every single shot was an extreme close-up and you couldn’t get the context of many scenes or see what was going on around the baby. You’re always left wondering how they got some of the shots…if there were a lot of people around, if the babies knew there was a camera present (they seemed like they did a lot of the time), or if they just gave the parents the cameras and told them to record as much as possible. I bet the making of the film would be a lot more entertaining that the film itself.
Filmmaker Thomas Balmes on set in Mongolia
Second gripe: There’s no information given to you other than location. The movie doesn’t give you a time frame of the shots so you don’t know if they’re before or after the scene you’ve just seen. Basically, you couldn’t really see the development of the babies; which to me, was the whole point of the project. You could assume that it was chronological but with editing, I doubt it actually is because they kept going from one baby to another and grouped the scenes into themes like cleaning the baby, playing, crawling, eating, etc. I did like how they did this though so you can compare the different cultures. But on things like crawling, walking, and speaking…there was no way of knowing if one culture was developing faster than the others. It would have been great to see if by bringing up your baby in one certain way that it would manifest better developmental results.
Another problem I had is that this film basically said: “Hey! Look! I’m a baby!” and that’s all it said…over and over and over again. I bet you’ll get great reactions from parents who have recently had a baby because they’ll compare the entire movie to how their baby acted. But for everybody else, it’s as entertaining as seeing all those baby pictures and videos that parents put on Facebook. It’s funny though, because the parents in this movie seem like the exact opposite…they pretty much abandon their kids in this movie and let the babies play with the knowledge that their being filmed. I imagine that the filmmakers told them to do this. You do see some interaction with the parents and babies, but most of the time, it’s just the baby.
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I really wanted to like this film but as a movie, it doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t offer anything new other than cute adorable baby moments. If you asked for four random groups of parents’ home movies, you probably could patch together a similar or better movie. The biggest laughs and one of the best scenes came from the baby from Namibia trying to stay awake. The guy next to me in the theater couldn’t do the same though – he was fast asleep. I struggled to stay awake as well at some points, but it’s hard to nod off when you continually get a community “awwwwww” from the audience. It’s a good thing this movie comes out for Mother’s Day because otherwise, I don’t think it could survive a theater release…it belongs as a few internet videos. I would’ve rather watched an hour and a half of YouTube videos like the one of the baby biting Charlie’s finger: “Owww, that movie hurt Charlie.”
Tags: Babies, Thomas Balmes
Matthew Fong created advancescreenings.com and is the lead contributor. He watches every type of movie and will try almost anything twice. You can follow him on twitter here: @matthewfong
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