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'Babies' Gets Brutally Panned
Have you experienced the horror that is the film Babies? Maybe you shouldn't, writes Christine Smallwood: "Breasts are everywhere, hovering like an overwhelming weather pattern. A crisis erupts when one child won't suck. The mother responds by grasping her nipple and dribbling milk all over the baby's face. There is no escape, for the baby or for us; the camera is in extreme close-up, the entire screen filled by nipple, face, milk…. The film functions like a bizarre visual seminar in object relations theory. The mothers, alas, never emerge as whole persons."
I think you missed the most jaw-dropping lines at the end: "If human women are animals, they are animals whose natural environment is language…Surely it matters what they are saying when they speak to each other, to their children, to their husbands. The birth of children is the death of parents. This film is a silent killer." Gaa! How was she able to leave the theater?
YES. I was also a bit nonplussed at the earlier reference to "nature's largesse of bodily redundance." I'm sure every parent in the world is relieved that if their baby loses a finger, there are 9 more to fill in.
I didn't want to spoil it for you! I NEVER quote the ending of a review, that's just mean!
I did, however, like this paragraph:
Babies are funny when they try to do stuff they can't do, or when they do something that, if a person bigger and stronger did it, would be met with "real" consequences. (It's funny when a toddler gently whips a scarf at an infant; this would be less funny if he were a teenager using his fist.) They're the original Stooges, natural Buster Keatons. The near-escape is their milieu. Babies revels in this brand of physical comedy. It's about the efforts of supremely uncoordinated creatures to master their uncooperative limbs, to integrate them into one working whole. The poop face is funny because it connects the parts of the body-something hidden (and trying to get out) united to something visible.
Her main objection — aside from the 'mothers' thing — seems to be that babies often grow up to be shitty people (literally!) Maybe she would have liked The Human Centipede better.
n+1 + nonplussed = +1;
therefore, nonplussed = -n
It's Math Day here at The Awl!
So she's saying the film is "silent but deadly"?
Every so often Choire needs to be reminded that we all think "My Baby! My Baby!" is hilarious, so he drops us bait like this.
It's been stuck in my head for days since this Babies movie came out!
Also on the author's list of complaints:
- the Gaea was disrespectful to Mother Earth
- zero motherF-bombs
- the film was not titled Mothers
*the Gaea SCENE, in which adorbzbaby Hattie experiences hippie-overload and flees the nursery as the parents sing a song in praise of ever-loving Gaea
She seems to be saying that, although the film is formulaic, it reaches for the jugular.
mookkake
If you haven't gotten an infant to latch on, I don't want you on my Supreme Court.
Between this post and the Kagan post, I'm so confused now about whether or not I'm supposed to have a baby.
As always, I refer you to Renaissance Lactamania, courtesy of the Prado Museum:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chimeraobscura/66142426/
The followup single from Phoenix?
STUPID BABIES!
When do they reveal their lazer eyes?
In the third act. Their first official action as Evil Satanic Babies is to erase their mothers and the oppressive breasts thereof from the ever-fracturing memory of Christine Smallwood.
Then they will fuck up some dogs.
Here's the quote for the movie poster:
"The birth of children is the death of parents! This film is a silent killer!"
– Not Rex Reed
This woman is trying to make me hate breasts. But it's not going to work!!
Dear Christine Smallwood,
She was using her breast milk as a mild cleanser on her son Bayar's face. It had nothing to do with sucking, unlike you.
I am still super-mad about your dumbness, lady.
I am confused. We are supposed to not like this movie because there are too many breasts? When has that EVER been a drawback?