Baby's Day Out

Infobox Film
name = Baby's Day Out


caption = Baby's Day Out poster
director = Patrick Read Johnson
producer = John Hughes
Richard Vane
writer = John Hughes
starring = Joe Mantegna
Lara Flynn Boyle
Joe Pantoliano
Brian Haley
Cynthia Nixon
Adam Robert Worton
Jacob Joseph Worton
music = Bruce Broughton
cinematography = Thomas E. Ackerman
editing = David Rawlins
distributor = 20th Century Fox
released = July 1, 1994 (USA)
runtime = 99 min.
budget = $50,000,000 (estimated)
gross = $16,671,505 (USA)
country = USA
language = English
mpaa_rating = PG
imdb_id = 0109190

"Baby's Day Out" is a 1994 comedy film about one day's adventures of a kidnapped baby in the city. The movie was directed by Patrick Read Johnson and written by John Hughes. It was rated PG by the MPAA for mild language and comic action.

Plot

Bennington "Bink" Austin Cotwell IV, a nine-month-old baby boy, who is the protagonist of the movie, is scheduled to have a special photograph taken by Downtown Baby Photographers to be published in the newspapers. However, unknown to Bink's parents, Bennington Sr. and Lorraine, the photographers, made up of a trio of bank robbers (who are the main antagonists of the movie), Eddie, Norby and Veeko, plan to kidnap Bink and hold him ransom. With Bennington Sr. at work, Lorraine and Nanny Gilbertine dress Bink in his finest clothes and prepare him for the spotlight. Eddie, Veeko and Norby arrive in their photographer disguises; Eddie asks Veeko to go the van and "retrieve a light metre" and demands some time alone with Bink for his full attention during the individual shot. But after Lorraine and Gilbertine leave to change, Eddie, Veeko and Norby flee from the mansion in their van with Bink and his favorite storybook, "Baby's Day Out", the "Boo-Boo book".

At their flat, the trio start their hilarious attempts to properly feed Bink (Norby changes Bink into regular clothes with difficulty and Veeko sprays Norby's bald head with hot milk to avoid risking burning Bink's throat, prompting Norby and Veeko to start a head-slapping match), and Norby is told to put Bink to sleep so as to keep him quiet, but Norby's incompetent singing and reading ultimately drive him to boredom and he falls asleep, leaving Bink to read his book alone. Unfortunately, Bink sees a pigeon on the steps outside the window, and follows it (the steps that lead to the building's roof) after seeing a similar bird in Baby's Day Out.

As Bink crawls about on the roof, he peers down through the broken glass top at Eddie and Veeko who are watching TV and accidentally draws their attention by allowing a drop of saliva to drop down on Eddie's neck. Waking Norby up, the trio chase after Bink to the roof, and Eddie spots Bink crawling toward a pigeon on a plank above a long fall. Worried for Bink's safety, Eddie runs as fast as he can toward Bink, but Bink crawls too far and falls onto the next building, and the other end of the plank hits Eddie and knocks him out. When Veeko angrily throws the plank away, he and Norby try to get Eddie to jump with them onto the next building, but the unconscious Eddie doesn't make it and he falls down into the garbage bin below, seriously injuring himself.

Meanwhile, Bink uses the elevator to get down to the bottom floor, and escapes from the trio (he passes within a few feet of Veeko and Norby, who are busy helping Eddie). Seeing a big blue bus like in his book, Bink boards it and accidentally reveals himself to the nearby trio, who give chase in their van.

They eventually catch up when the bus stops, but see that Bink is gone. However, Veeko spots Bink in the bag of an obese lady who insulted Eddie. They tail her, but she attacks them upon hearing them and unknowingly buys Bink enough time to escape into a nearby department store, another location in Baby's Day Out. But Bink is mistaken for a lost child and taken to the Mother Goose corner, from where he eventually escapes and heads for the exit. Unfortunately, Bink accidentally crawls over the wire of a journalist who is making a report outside the store, and appears on TV for a few seconds, during which Eddie, Norby and Veeko spot Bink and head for the store just as Bink crawls into a nearby Taxi, another location in Baby's Day Out, and escapes from the now-frustrated trio.

Eddie, Veeko and Norby eventually find the Taxi, and to their horror, spot Bink crawling across the busy road. The trio give chase as Bink makes it to the pavement and enters a zoo, another location in Baby's Day Out. After getting their feet squashed by a car, the trio make it to the pavement and jump into an open pit, where they get themselves dirty. But they see Bink's baby tracks and follow them to the ape-house of the zoo, where they see that Bink has somehow made it into a Gorilla Cage. When everyone leaves the ape-house, the trio take turns in reaching into the cage and trying to get Bink, until the Gorilla backs them off by bashing Veeko's hand, sending Norby into the air with a mopstick, and growling hard in Eddie's face, throwing him into the bars into the cage opposite the Gorilla's. Then, Bink bids a tearful goodbye to the Gorilla, and crawls out of the zoo from under the bars of the Gorilla's back window.

Bink eventually ends up in a park, and crawls off just as the trio spot him in their van and surround him. However, when Eddie tries to grab his "nephew Bink", Bink quickly crawls away and down a rabbit hole. Determined to get Bink back, the trio run to the other side of the road and finally catch Bink as he emerges from the other side of the rabbit hole. But the trio spot two policemen examining their van (they left the engine on), and quickly sit on a nearby bench, hiding Bink under Eddie's coat. Unfortunately for Eddie, Bink starts pinching him from underneath the coat and, just as Veeko and Norby finally manage to walk the friendly policemen away, sets fire to Eddie's trousers before escaping into the bushes and out of sight. In probably the film's most hilarious moment, Norby and Veeko try to put out the fire on Eddie's groin, and Veeko ultimately succeeds by stomping his foot hard several times on Eddie's groin, seriously hurting him. The angry Eddie then tells Veeko to follow Bink on foot while he and Norby look around in the van.

Meanwhile, Bink has crawled to another location in Baby's Day Out: a construction site, where Bink crawls onto a girder with a builder's doughnut and goes high into the sky just as Veeko arrives with Eddie and Norby. The trio follow Bink into the air via an elevator, and tell Veeko to jump onto the passing girder to grab Bink. Unfortunately, Veeko's weight causes the girder to tilt, and Bink slides onto the roof of the elevator as Veeko dangles dangerously from the girder. The cowardly Eddie then tells the acrophobic Norby to grab Veeko but accidentally causes Norby to lose footing and hold on to Veeko's stomach for dear life. As the girder swings dangerously, Norby eventually loses his grip and ultimately falls down into a vat of liquid concrete, saving his life, just as the girder swings upward and throws Veeko back onto the platform with Eddie.

Eddie and Veeko then try to get to a lower level and catch Bink, but Eddie suggests that Veeko jump onto the roof of an elevator to avoid being seen. This causes Veeko to hurt his back, and after a series of predicaments, Veeko is ultimately thrown off the building and into a dump truck, where he miraculously survives but is drenched in rotten paint.

Eddie then finds and confronts Bink alone, but he slips on Bink's saliva and falls to the floor, where a hammer hits him in the head, rendering him dizzy and causing him to activate a vat of cement that spills on him. Enraged, Eddie taunts Bink for his mindless victory, but Bink jumps onto a descending platform and escapes from Eddie, who was too late to follow. Now left alone, Eddie attempts to use a crane to get down, but the crane stops and the five o'clock whistle blows, telling the workers to pack up and go home. As Bink and the workers leave, the sun quickly sets, and when the guard closes the site, Eddie is left stranded in mid-air on the crane, while Veeko and Norby look up at him from the ground.

Meanwhile, at Bink's house, FBI Agent Dale Grissom comes up with news for Bennington Sr., Lorraine and Gilbertine regarding the whereabouts of Bink: a bus, a department store, a zoo, a park, and a construction site. Knowing that Bink has been following the storyline of Baby's Day Out, Gilbertine deduces that Bink is now heading for the sixth and final destination in the book: The Old Soldiers' Home. Bink's parents, Gilbertine and Grissom all rush to the Old Soldiers' Home.

At nightfall, Bink arrives at the Old Soldiers' Home, where the old war heroes immediately recognize Bink as the abducted baby and take him in warmly. Later on, Bink's family and friends show up, and enjoy a tearful reunion with their baby.

On the way home, they realise that Bink has lost Baby's Day Out, but Bink refers to an apartment clock as "Boo-Boo", and Lorraine immediately realizes that Bink is pointing to his storybook, which is at the "Tick-Tock", the home of Eddie, Veeko and Norby.

At the "Tick-Tock", while Eddie, Veeko and Norby nurse their injuries, they joke a bit in triumph and agree to go back to robbing banks when they hear Bink crying "Boo-Boo" from outside. Horrified, the trio run to their window and see that they are surrounded by an army of policemen who demand that they return the "Boo-Boo" and put their hands over their heads. Eddie throws Baby's Day Out out of the window, and it lands at Lorraine's feet, on the last page of the story. Eddie, Veeko and Norby are then handcuffed and taken to prison.

That night, Bennington Sr. and Lorraine agree to have their friend, Old Willie, take Bink's picture the next morning. Unknown to them, Bink is still awake and ready to read a new book: "Baby's Trip to China".

Cast

*Joe Mantegna as Edgar "Eddie" Mauser
*Lara Flynn Boyle as Lorraine Cotwell
*Joe Pantoliano as Norbert "Norby" LeBlaw
*Brian Haley as Victor "Veeko" Riley
*Cynthia Nixon as Gilbertine
*Matthew Glave as Bennington "Bink" Austin Cotwell, Sr.
*Fred Dalton Thompson as Dale Grissom
*John Neville as Mr. Andrews, the Cotwells' Butler
*Eddie Bracken as Old Soldier

The character of "Baby Bink" was played by the Worton twins, Adam Robert and Jacob Joseph.

Trivia

*Many elements of Hughes' previous films "Home Alone" and "Dennis the Menace", most notably cartoonish Rube Goldberg-esque situations, are prevalent in this feature.
*A video game for the Sega Genesis and Sega Mega Drive systems was also created based on the film.
*When advanced screens of "Titanic" were shipped to movie theaters, they shipped under the code name "Baby's Day Out 2".
*Baby's Day Out is inspiration for the super hit telugu film Sisindri, starring Akkineni Nagarjuna's son as the baby
*The movie featured 2008 U.S. Presidential candidate Fred Thompson in a supporting role. This was his last motion picture before being elected to the US Senate in 1994.

External links

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* [http://deseretnews.com/movies/view/1,1257,119,00.html Review by Chris Hicks at deseretnews.com]