July 1, 1994
BABY’S DAY OUT was a financial flop panned by critics, and from what I remember kind of a breaking point where for a while John Hughes became thought of more as the kids-movies-about-testicle-smashing guy instead of the beloved-‘80s-teen-coming-of-age movie guy. I don’t really have a strong opinion about his work but I found this one for the most part unfunny and annoying. I’ll try not to be too mean about it.
Hughes is the writer/producer, but the director is Patrick Read Johnson, who was a miniature model maker on 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and WARLOCK, second unit director of DEAD HEAT, and writer/director of SPACED INVADERS. It makes sense that this would come from someone with that background, because it’s a big live action cartoon with FX by ILM, including one of the first c.g. three-dimensional cityscapes and whatever tricks are involved in making it look like an actual baby is crawling around a city being lifted around by cranes, barely avoiding getting run over, etc.
Twin babies Adam Robert Worton and Jacob Joseph Worton star as 9-month old Bennington Austin Cotwell IV, nickname Bink. Verne Troyer is the baby’s stunt double – his first movie. In the opening scene Bink’s nanny Gilbertine (Cynthia Nixon, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES) reads him a picture book which is also called Baby’s Day Out, and also about a baby crawling around a city.
Bink and Gilbertine live in a big mansion with Bink’s wealthy industrialist (or whatever) parents Laraine (Lara Flynn Boyle, THE DARK BACKWARD, MOBSTERS, RED ROCK WEST) and Bennington III (Matthew Glave, GHOST IN THE MACHINE), plus loyal butler Mr. Andrews (John Neville, THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN). Today Mom decides she wants to have Bink’s portrait taken because all of the rich people put their babies’ pictures in the newspaper (?) and there are starting to be questions about why they haven’t (?). But a trio of wacky criminals, Eddie (Joe Mantegna, HOUSE OF GAMES), Norby (Joe Pantoliano, RISKY BUSINESS) and Veeko (Brian Haley, ALWAYS) take the place of the photographer, run away with Bink and try to collect a $5 million ransom.
Of course, it will be harder than they assume. The baby follows a pigeon out the window onto a ledge, and they spend most of the rest of the movie chasing him across the city (on a roof, on a bus, in the zoo, through a pipe, up a skyscraper) and receive various types of bonkings. They are kicked and punched in the balls, drooled on, mangled by a gorilla, hit in the head with flying sledge hammers, they slip on drool,fall off of buildings landing crotch first on many different objects, get their toes run over by a car, industrial waste is dumped on them, you name it. And all the while they scream, shriek, mug, whack each other on the head, get real upset, and all that sort of humor coded stuff.
One weird part is when Norby falls off the skyscraper and lands like this:
The body is motionless except for a limp jiggle. Looks absolutely dead. We immediately learn that he’s alive (then he falls and smashes his dick and then falls into wet cement), but as far as I can tell the other two assume he has expired and don’t care at all.
The aggressive score by Bruce Broughton (HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID, STAY TUNED) tells us very stridently how sweet the baby is and how amusing everything else is, and usual I feel very condescended to. For me this style of comedy is a fairly painful experience, but in the interest of positivity I would like to name a few comedy ideas that kind of amused me. There’s the part when Eddie is falling and grabs onto a birdfeeder, which then detaches from its window one suction cup at a time. Kind of a Wile E. Coyote moment. And there’s the part where he jumps out onto a crane to try to do something but then he gets trapped on it because suddenly the crane operator and the entire work site clock out and leave and there’s a shot of Eddie hanging there silhouetted in front of the sun going down.
To me the funniest performance is Haley as Veeko. He has some parts where he gets to play it very straight and not too broad, and he got a genuine laugh out of me from the self righteous way he delivers the line “I don’t know about you, but I don’t eat pieces of my body” when criticized for biting off and spitting out his fingernails. (Regional note: I wasn’t familiar with Haley but I read that he grew up in Seattle, was inspired to become an actor after stumbling across the filming of SCORCHY downtown, and was successful as a comedian here in the ‘80s before moving to L.A. He later played cops in MARS ATTACKS!, THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE and THE DEPARTED and Clint’s son in GRAN TORINO.)
Pantoliano also plays it as straight as he can, but then they gotta run around screaming and crying and being wacky. It’s not nearly as bad of a bumbling criminal trio as in 3 NINJAS KICK BACK, but that’s hardly an excuse.
Mostly this is the kind of humor that may or may not appeal to very young kids, but I will not pretend to be entirely exempt. After a painfully drawn out scene where Eddie has to talk to cops while hiding the baby under a coat on his lap and the baby somehow gets a lighter and somehow knows how to use it and somehow creates an inferno on Eddie’s dick, Veeko tries to help by stomping the fire out. Just repeatedly slamming his boots down hard on Eddie’s crotch, twisting his foot around, just mashing that dude’s junk into paste. That was pretty funny. If any moment in this movie can justify its existence it is definitely the dick stomping.
Another positive thing I can say about the movie is that it has very high production values for a lowbrow slapstick movie like, say, ERNEST GOES TO SCHOOL earlier this summer. There’s lots of on location shooting, the design of the city has a slightly retro style to match the picture book, there’s a big soundstage rooftop set, and for the sequence where various shenanigans happen with a zoo gorilla they actually got Rick Baker to create the gorilla suit and animatronic, so it’s very realistic.
I gotta wonder if Baker was offended when he saw this atrocious, collaged together poster that made me assume it was just gonna be the typical gorilla costume from the costume rental place. Why would they do that? They paid to make the movie at this level and then chose to pretend otherwise!
I do have a soft spot for live action movies mimicking cartoons. This one is clearly inspired by Popeye and Swee’Pea cartoons like Little Swee’Pea (1936), where the baby gets loose in the zoo, and Child Sockology (1953), where he crawls onto a skyscraper under construction. But there’s a pretty big difference between watching a little drawing with dots for eyes and an actual baby. This is gonna sound horrible – it probly is horrible – but I kind of hate this baby. (The fictional character, not the presumed innocent until proven guilty twins who played him.)
In order to make all the child peril not upsetting they have to never show the baby crying or getting scared, so instead he smiles or giggles at each thing that happens to him, and says “boo boo” every time something reminds him of his picture book. It’s just these three moves on a loop, so even if you have a soft spot for baby cuteness I’m not sure you’re gonna be up for 99 minutes of it. If you could enjoy 99 minutes of peekaboo with someone else’s child then this may be your thing, but personally I’m not built like that.
I’m obviously not the intended audience for BABY’S DAY OUT, so who gives a shit, but for me its childlike simplicity ended up feeling kinda gross at the end. When we meet this kid in a nursery bigger than my apartment, attended to by a nanny and butler, in a house with fucking columns on it, his idiot parents obsessed with getting his photo in the paper so people know he’s “the prettiest baby in the city,” it seems to have in mind some light satire about the absurdity of rich people. But from the moment of the kidnapping the parents become serious characters (with respectably serious performances), the music wants us to feel heartbroken for them, and there’s even a treacly scene where the mom solemnly acknowledges the nanny’s part in raising the baby and that this is hard on her as well. At the end the kid is back in his nursery and we’re supposed to be so happy that everyone lives happily ever after and shit. I guess all I’m saying is that one of the many ways PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE makes this live action cartoon shit seem easy is having an interestingly skewed world view. I think this sort of thing works better when it’s winking at weirdos than patting squares on the back, but maybe that’s just my bias.
The weirdest fact about BABY’S DAY OUT is that it was hugely popular in India and Pakistan and has been remade in Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam, and Sinhalese. But that didn’t cause them to make the sequel possibly teased at the end, when Bink pulls out a book called Baby’s Trip to China. I have no idea if that was something they really thought about doing, but it’s probly for the best that Hughes didn’t get the chance.
Johnson followed BABY’S DAY OUT with ANGUS, and then created DRAGONHEART (on which he retained a story credit). In this century he spent many years working on the very personal 5-25-77, based on his real life experience of seeing STAR WARS early when he was a kid. He also did some more visual effects work (he has a credit on Thomas Jane’s DARK COUNTRY).
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Summer of 1994 connections:
Like I LOVE TROUBLE, released two days earlier, BABY’S DAY OUT takes place in Chicago. Huge week for the windy city. Also the bad guys’ hideout is a penthouse apartment with a window like the one in THE CROW.
I know that was Detroit but I’m pretty sure they take place in the same cinematic universe. The only argument against that would be that Anna Levine (NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, WARLOCK, UNFORGIVEN, TRUE ROMANCE), who played Sarah’s junkie mother Darla in THE CROW, plays a different mother character in this. But maybe she’s Darla’s sister or something.
Tie-ins:
There was a children’s novelization written by Ron Fontes and Justine Korman, a husband and wife team who have written over 600 children’s books, including adaptations of THE LION KING – the movie the studio credited with destroying its chances at the box office.
A video game was created for Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Gameboy, but they decided not to release it, likely ruining millions of childhoods.
July 3rd, 2024 at 6:51 pm
Ho. Ly. Shit. This is better than seeing Blown Away or The Shadow on this site. Ok, hear me out. I loved this in 1994.
Obviously it was a blatant attempt to cash in on Home Alone. And apparently somewhere between 8-years-old and infant is people’s line for reckless child endangerment being funny. That’s actually how it works for me. Oh, you think Home Alone is funny? What if it was a damn baby.
The mischief construction actually works solidly. The gorilla scene builds with each kidnapper trying to distract the gorilla. The crotch scene is an all timer and really looks like Mantegna let them light him up. It also amused me when Joey Pants made up the lyrics to Mary Had a Little Lamb.
So I completely understand what the intended audience rejected this. To me it’s so subversive it works as an indictment on that kind of kids movie, intentionally or not.
Johnson said on Twitter he had a director’s cut. I wonder what was different. Maybe the Sega Genesis game has clues.
Anyway, thanks for including this, Vern.