Babies

2010 documentary

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 20/20; Dylan: 4/20; Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: A seemingly endless juxtaposition of home video footage of babies from Nambia, Japan, Mongolia, and America during the first year of their lives.

A baby who isn't yours is nothing more than an obnoxious flabby burdensome stupid thing who, according to my father, looks like a shrunken Winston Churchill. And to be completely honest, I'm not sure I would want to watch ninety minutes of home videos featuring my own children as babies, let alone these babies I've got no connection with at all. Purportedly, this is all about how different cultures raise their children, but there's very little focus, just pointless and annoyingly precious scenes strung together haphazardly and given a title that a baby might have been able to come up with. And despite the cultural differences, some subtle and some extreme, we all know that it's all going to end the same with the annoying babies eventually becoming dangerous adults. So even though it's all shot very well, it's really as pointless and trite as documentary filmmaking gets. I would rather change a crappy diaper than watch this one again, but it's the exact sort of thing that some people would find delightful. For whatever reason, I want to blame Oprah for this.