Review of Baby's Day Out (1994) by Michael G — 02 Jan 2010

Everyone wants to make 'Baby's Day Out' a sort of 'Ferris Beuller' for toddlers. Or a simple minded kiddy movie. But it?s not. It's a philosophical statement about the meaning of life, written by a man who rose to stardom writing and producing the likes of 'National Lampoon's Vacation,' 'Delta House' and 'Home Alone,' but who finally tired of the banality of Hollywood story-telling and wanted to produce something simple, pure, and innocent.

Write-producer John Hughes rose from a college drop out and lowly copy writer to become Hollywood's hottest live-action comedy script writer. His movie 'Home Alone' remains the top grossing comedy of all time. And yes, he's the guy who wrote 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.? Then one day he just dropped out of sight ... disappeared from Tinsel Town to live on a farm somewhere in Illinois. He wouldn't give out interviews and he never went back. But before he left he wrote and produced 'Baby's Day Out.'.

Hughes apparently became severely disillusioned with the Hollywood scene (who isn't these days?) and had a moral epiphany of some sort. He became a poitical and moral conservative and wouldn't answer the phone from the tinsel crowd anymore. Former colleagues were so perplexed by his actions they even made a documentary about him ('Don't You Ever Forget Me' - Alliance Films). A documentary he refused to participate in.

But there is a lot of things Hollywood types fail to grasp. They judge a story by how raunchy and risqué it is and - most important of all - how much money it will make.

'Baby's Day Out' was not written to make a pile of money. It was a flop at the box office. No one else but someone as talented and with such a track record as Hughes could have gotten the script past the money bags.

Is it funny? YES! But only to those who are truly a "child at heart." If you're looking for a 'Ferris Bueller for toddlers' kind of humor, you'll be disappointed - and bored.

No, 'Baby' is a metaphor. A metaphor for the life. The life we were sent here to live, but somehow forgot all about somewhere along the way. Life is ... well, an adventure. An adventure away from mom and dad for a short while. Or 'Mom and Dad,' if you will. An adventure filled with people who never really seem to see the obvious (you'll know what I mean if you've seen the move; I mean, who could miss a baby crawling across a busy thoroughfare?). Where the only people who *really* see the truth are those who are pure in heart ... or devils looking to destroy us. You know, the ones no one sees or acknowledges anymore either.

We're all like babies who find ourselves separated from our mansions above and left to wander about and fend for ourselves in a big, wonderful and sometimes dangerous world. But for the faithful and pure in heart, life is a great adventure to be seen, to be lived with delight, and to be savored in good times as well as bad. God is in His heaven, after all, and all will turn out well. An illusion you say? But the *real* illusions are only the illusions of pain, sorrow and suffering we choose to participate in; we live out the stories we've been told, the stories we choose to believe.

Life is ... a story. A 'boo-boo' as Baby Bink calls it - nothing more, nothing less. Whether it turns out as a tragedy or a comedy is - ultimately - up to only ourselves and nobody else.