Kat with a K

Review: Babies

Babies is a documentary about the lives of four specific babies from birth to age one in various parts of the world - Mongolia, Namibia, Japan, and the U.S. Really. That's it. There's no narrations. No voiceovers. No dialogue other than whatever adults happen to be saying in the background. But it's oddly riveting. I mean, I suppose it helps if you like babies - and these are some seriously cute babies, but then, most are. But while the babies are charming, the really interesting thing about the movie is the lens it provides to examine everyday life in these various cultures. I thought the lack of narration made the movie more effective, but personally, I would have liked a companion book to learn more about the cultures in question.

This movie didn't seem to set out to have a message or moral, exactly, but there were definitely two messages that seemed clear. The first: Babies are not fragile. They're really hard to break, in fact. These babies were crawling around Africa and getting trampled by cows and being hit by their siblings and falling off things left and right, and they were all completely fine. Nervous first-time parents should perhaps watch this just for that lesson. The second message was that Western babies have an awful lot of stuff they don't need, and are pretty overstimulated, and parents should probably just calm down already.

And one thing not exactly about the movie itself: It seems that, because the movie is about babies, parents have concluded that it is for babies. This is not the case. I have no problem with small babies being pretty much anywhere as long as they stay fairly quiet, but there were a bunch of toddlers and preschoolers at this movie who were pretty bored. And there were crying babies who were not taken out of the theater. The content of the movie makes this complaint sound slightly ridiculous - "Please take your screaming child out of the theater so I can hear the screaming child on the screen!" - but I don't think I'm wrong here. It doesn't matter what the movie is about. If your baby is screaming, he's not happy, and your fellow movie-goers aren't happy either. Please do something about it.