(USA, 70 min.)
Dir. Bob Byington, Writ. Onur Tukel
Starring: Kieran Culkin, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally,
Martin Starr, Kevin Corrigan, Noël Wells, Stephen Root, Trieste Kelly Dunn
Infinity Baby
might have been a hip and edgy indie film in 1995. The dated black and white
cinematography, slow pacing, spiteful characters, and talky, dialogue-heavy
scenes are the kind of things that peppered the early microbudget film scene.
Between Sundance kids and mumblecore brats, however, the outburst of digital
DIY filmmaking produced an overwhelming mountain of garbage. Infinity Baby is near the top of the
pile. It’s been said before and it needs to be said again: just because
everyone can make a movie doesn’t mean everyone should.
Infinity Baby is a tale of stunted growth and arrested development as thirtysomething Ben (Kieran Culkin) goes from date to date in a mindless cycle of screwing girls and then screwing them over. He shuffles through them like a friend mindlessly swiping right and left, using people as distractions without the aim for creating tangible or meaningful relationships even if they’re short term. Culkin is just awful as the self-absorbed twerp who doesn’t give two fucks about anything. He just looks bored and the malaise is infectious.
The film also a storyline about a lab run by Neo (Nick
Offerman) that produces babies that never age. Don’t even bother trying to
reconcile the plot hole that assumes people actually want to take care of a
screaming, whining, shitting, vomiting infant forever. These evergreen infants
are just a ham-fisted metaphor for Ben and all the Millennials who don’t want to
grow up.
A wildly inconsistent peanut gallery of characters populates
a random assortment of nonsensical subplots, including botched babysitting
duties that leave an infant dead and a running gag with Ben’s “mom” (Megan
Mullally) who chases away his girlfriends. Infinity
Baby is very disappointing as writer Onur Tukel’s follow-up darkly funny
and pointedly satirical hiss fest Catfight,
and the film doesn’t work on any level with its humourless, pointless, and lifeless
speculative farce since director Bob Byington doesn’t give it any spark. The
film’s mercifully brief running time of 70 minutes even feels overdrawn and has
some tacked on gags with the credits, just to indicate what a bad idea Infinity Baby is. What a waste
of time and (to some extent) talent.
