Released on July 1, 1994, by 20th Century Fox in the United States, the film was a box office bomb grossing only $30 million against a $48 million budget. Despite being panned by critics, it has since become a cult film.[3][4]
Plot
Bennington Austin "Bink" Cotwell IV, the nine-month-old son of socialites Laraine and Bennington Austin "Bing" Cotwell III, lives in a mansion in a suburb of Chicago and is just about to appear in the social pages of the newspaper.
Three very clumsy criminals, Edgar "Eddie" Mauser, Norbert "Norby" LeBlaw, and Victor "Veeko" Riley, disguise themselves as baby photographers from the newspaper and kidnap Bink, demanding a ransom of $5 million. After the kidnapping, however, the criminals have difficulty controlling Bink at their apartment. Norby attempts to put him to sleep by reading his favourite storybook, Baby's Day Out (or "Boo-Boo" as he calls it), only to fall asleep himself from boredom, leaving Bink unattended. Looking through the book, Bink notices a pigeon on the page and then one by the window; he follows it out and successfully gets away from his kidnappers. The ensuing chase culminates in Eddie falling off the building and into a garbage bin. Norby and Veeko rescue him, and they begin pursuing Bink across the city.
The FBI arrives at the mansion, headed by Dale Grissom, where they try to piece together clues along with Bink's parents and his nanny, Gilbertine. Meanwhile, Bink, now outside on the ground and crawling about, finds another part of his book – the blue bus, which he then boards. The criminals realise he is escaping and start chasing the bus in their van, but their efforts are in vain.
Meanwhile, on the bus, Bink crawls into the bag of an obese woman who gets off at her stop shortly afterward. By the time the criminals catch the bus, they realize Bink is not on board and follow the lady, leading to a physical altercation after she catches them. In the distraction, Bink crawls up to a revolving door at the entrance to a department store and is forced inwards by its momentum. He is stopped by an employee who works for the store's day care center, believing he is another baby who escaped from there. He then escapes from the store and eventually crawls into traffic after a ride on a taxi. Meanwhile Bink’s parents receive a phone call from a concerned citizen Joe Depke who believes he saw Bink with a woman Mrs. McCray. Depke feigns memory loss when questioned until Mr. Cotwell pays him money. In the McCray’s apartment the couple realize it’s not Bink and apologize for the inconvenience. Mrs. McCray tells them she prays Bink will come back to them and knows how’d she’d feel if it were one of her kids. Just before leaving she tells Bing that she believes someone somewhere watches over the babies. The couple tell Mrs. McCray they hope she never is in their place for her children’s sake & express hope that someone does watch over the babies.
The criminals attempt to follow Bink, but keep getting injured in the process as he makes his way to the city zoo. They are shocked to find him in the ape house with a western lowland gorilla, who shows a friendly and paternal side and does not injure him. The gorilla also feeds Bink with some of his fruits. The criminals try to retrieve him, but the gorilla notices them; he pounds Veeko's hand, throws Norby into the air using a mop as a catapult, and hurls Eddie against the bars of another nearby cage.
The criminals corner and catch Bink in the zoo's park, but are confronted by two chatty police officers, who have noticed that their van's engine is still running. During the conversation, Eddie hides Bink under his coat in his lap, but Bink reaches his cigarette lighter, setting his groin on fire and sneaking off as soon as the officers are gone. Veeko extinguishes the fire by stomping repeatedly on Eddie's groin.
They then follow Bink to a construction site where they experience several near-death mishaps such as Veeko getting thrown off the building and into the back of a garbage truck, Norby falling into a vat of wet cement, and Eddie getting stranded on a crane after being hit by a hammer and drenched in glue. The sun then sets as Bink and the construction crew leave the site. After managing to escape, the criminals give up on catching Bink and return home.
Bink's parents are notified of various sightings of him in the city and Gilbertine deduces that he has been following Baby's Day Out, and will most likely head for the Old Soldiers' Home next. Sure enough, Bink has made his way inside the home, where the elderly residents entertain him with a rendition of Irving Berlin's "This Is the Army, Mr. Jones." Laraine and Bing run in and joyously embrace Bink. On the way home, he begins to call out for his "Boo-Boo" towards the criminals' flat. Laraine believes he is looking at the clock on top of the building and tries teaching him it’s a “tick tock”. Gilbertine again deduces he wants his book and tells Laraine there’s no “tick tock” in the book. The recuperating criminals, upon hearing Bink calling out for his book, realize that he has returned, and upon looking out the window, to their shock, they find themselves surrounded by the FBI. They also find Bink and his parents standing outside the building as well. As Eddie berates Bink for ratting them out, Grissom forces the criminals to return Bink's book. As Eddie throws down the book, he, Norby and Veeko are arrested for kidnapping Bink and Bink is happy to have his book back and returns home with his parents.
Back at home, Bink is put to bed by his parents, who discuss having his photograph taken by a normal photographer in the morning while, unbeknownst to them, he wakes up and gets ready to read another book titled Baby's Trip to China.
Cast
Adam Robert Worton and Jacob Joseph Worton as Bennington Austin "Bink" Cotwell IV
Jugen Heimann, Tom Hester, Mark Setrakian, and Marc L. Taylor assisted in the gorilla's face performance
Neil Flynn and William Homes as the cops in the park
Production
Baby's Day Out was filmed in Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California on August 17 - December 16, 1993, and featured one of the earliest fully computer-generated 3D cityscapes which was a challenge for Industrial Light and Magic. Senior digital artist Henry LaBounta said: “We had to have a CG city – Chicago – for those shots where the baby’s looking down from the crane. I was the guy that was going to be making that city. And I was like, I just started here." Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll responded "Yeah, but you’re the 3D expert guy," causing LaBounta to realize that he was coming in on his first show as one of the experts on the team, as most of the people he was working with only had experience with 2D compositing.[5]
Reception
Critical response
The film was generally received poorly by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a "Rotten" score of 24% based on 17 reviews with an average rating of 4.5/10.[6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[7]
Critic Roger Ebert wrote that "Baby's Day Out contains gags that might have worked in a Baby Herman cartoon, but in live action, with real people, taxis, buses, streets, and a real baby, they're just not funny. The Worton twins are adorable as Baby Bink, however; the audience produced an audible coo the first time they saw him on the screen." He gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four.[8] However, his partner on the Siskel & Ebert show, Gene Siskel, liked it and called it an "absolute perfect child's-eye view of the fantasies that they might have."[9]
Hal Hinson, writing for the Washington Post, wrote: "The pace is quick and efficient but never frantic...almost everything in the picture is just right, including the two-bit crooks who abduct the superhero toddler and end up bruised and begging hilariously for mercy. Best of all, though, is the Binkman himself, whose tiny face is so expressive that he brings new meaning to the phrase 'conquering with a smile.'"[10]
Box office
The film opened with takings of $4,044,662 at the start of July 1994.[11][12][13] It finally grossed $16,827,402 at the box office in the United States and Canada and $13.4 million internationally,[2] for a worldwide total of $30.2 million, a disappointing return considering the $48 million production budget.
Baby's Day Out was a popular film in India.[3] The owner of a large Kolkata theater told Roger Ebert in 1999 that it was the most successful film at his theater, running full for more than 17 weeks.[16] It was remade in Telugu in 1995 as Sisindri, in Hindi as Ek Phool Teen Kante in 1997. The Telugu version was then remade in Malayalam in 1999 as James Bond.[4] In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese version was titled Onna Babo.
Legacy
In the 2010s, Baby's Day Out was the subject of a video essay by Red Letter Media. The video, a review of the film told from the perspective of the fictional character Mr. Plinkett, went viral, and portions of the film subsequently became memes.[17]
Cancelled video game
A video game adaptation of the film was planned, completed and slated to be released on Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy in October 1994,[18][19] but was canceled shortly before release. Instead of playing as Bink, the player would have controlled his guardian angel in order to guide him to safety in the vein of Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. Despite its cancellation, an advertisement for the game is included on the film's VHS release. Two prototypes of the Sega Genesis port have surfaced online in subsequent years, but the GameBoy and Super NES versions are still lost for now.
Home media
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film on VHS on April 4, 1995, and on DVD on January 29, 2002. Special features include Patrick Read Johnson's commentary, a featurette and a trailer for it. It was re-released on DVD on October 11, 2011.
