“This is my 5′ 10″ of guile, gut, and gristle, versus you two-and-a-half feet of goo-goos, ga-gas, and giggles.”

Justin’s rating: These guys should’ve died sixteen times over by the end credits

Justin’s review: You know how they say you should never meet your heroes? I have a maxim similar to that: You should never commit to watching the full filmography of a screenwriter or director you admire. You’re going to become disillusioned at some point.

I’m still not clear on why John Hughes, master of the ’80s teen movie, took a hard turn into kiddie films in the ’90s. I mean, there was the monster success of Home Alone, but that didn’t fully explain the shift from teenagers to kids as protagonists. Suddenly he was giving us Curly Sue, Dutch, Dennis the Menace, and — yes — Baby’s Day Out. Honestly, I cringe every time I read that title. It’s like he deliberately tried to think of the least cool, least appealing name for a movie that would be guaranteed to appeal to no one. Even babies.

Well, I’m a glutton for punishment and curiosity, so I actually sat through Baby’s Day Out and tried not to be seen by any of my family during the process.

From what I can ascertain, Hughes bought into the key error that many copycats also did with Home Alone: That the sole reason that people liked that film was to see a kid beat up bad adults in an over-the-top cartoon fashion. That was part of it, yes, but it really was so much more. To reduce it to the beatings is to make a film nothing more than, say, a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Another misstep out the gate was to center this around a super-rich family that lives in a Chicago palatial estate and wants to get their nine-month-old “Baby Bink” photographed so that — and I am not kidding — could be featured in the newspapers so that other wealthy families might be envious. Because who doesn’t relate to that exact scenario?

But things get a little more complicated when a trio of kidnappers — Joe Mantegna, Joe Pantoliano, and Brian Haley — steal away Baby Bink to hold him ransom. Little do they know, however, that Bink is a hellspawn protected by every cartoon and movie rule that makes him both invincible and a machine of vengeance.

Baby Bink promptly escapes the kidnappers and begins a city-wide trek. There isn’t so much a plot that follows as a bunch of near-escapades for a kid, a boatload of coincidences that keep him from being seen and/or rescued, and bad guys getting brutalized by the kid and environment. Sometimes each other, too. It’s the kind of movie where you can make a drinking game out of how many times a crotch gets smashed.

Baby’s Day Out became mildly famous, just not for its lackluster box office and underwhelming reviews. Rather, it was the first movie that employed CGI to replicate cityscapes in scenes where they had to show Bink in imminent danger without it being real. I guess getting a footnote in the cinematic history books is a consolation prize of sorts.

There’s no incredible depth or that trademark insightful John Hughes dialogue here, just a whole lot of stunts and slapstick. I will admit that everything here looks really great, with a rich color palette, some nice set designs, and an attractive tour around Chicago.

However, it’s an impossibly tall order to make me connect to or care about a film where the protagonist can’t talk or keep from defecating in his own pants. This is simply Home Alone’s Day Off, and one is better off seeing the John Hughes films that John Hughes is aping.

Intermission!

• The little kids book intro is a clever idea
• Warning: close-ups of a baby’s bare butt being powdered
• Oh man those disguises
• The kidnappers’ hideout is surprisingly cozy
• “That little doodoo machine is my retirement money.”
• Fruit Rings cereal is a nice generic knockoff
• Verne Troyer was Bink’s stunt double in some scenes, because why not make this more surreal?
• “Look both ways! Look both ways!”
• Seriously, does no one at any point see a random kid crawling around a city and not say something?
• The kid crawls between the reporter reporting on him and she doesn’t notice? Even when the camera pans down at him? She is so fired tomorrow.