Bad Baby Bad

Rating: 1/10 (11 September 2009)

Where do I begin? I read several positive reviews about this film that made it sound interesting and poignant. It was apparently meant to be a film about dilemma that was primarily designed to make the viewer reflex on its message and think about their' own moral decision making. What would you do, type of thing. By the time the moral of the story came – I no longer cared. The film was a huge disappointment. First of all, the story is confusing and disjointed. Ben Affleck directs like he acts – like a teenager with A.D.D. The characters were uninteresting, unmotivated and miscast. Casey Affleck (Patrick Kenzie) as a private eye looks more like Dookie Howser than Mike Hammer. He tries so hard to master the Boston accent that he is difficult to understand - not that he has anything interesting to say. So little time is spent on character development that the viewer doesn't really care about who any of these people are or what happens to them. Michelle Monaghan literally sleep walks through her role as Affleck's girlfriend and partner, muttering a few phrases occasionally so you won't mistake her for a mannequin, but so uninspired that one wonders who she was cozy with to get the role. (I think you can all figure out how Casey Affleck got the lead role). Ed Harris, who is a good actor, does his best with the uninspired dialogue but his efforts are wasted on a part that no one could have saved. Most disappointing of all is Morgan Freemen's role as Jack Doyle. Morgan appears as an aging police official – who looks to be about 80 – who for some reason "lost" a 12 year old daughter. OK, that's possible, but improbable. While his name appears prominently in the advertisements for this debacle, Freeman's character shows up in about 5 minutes of the actual film. In conclusion, the acting is second rate, the characters inadequately developed and the story poorly told. Gone Baby Gone should have been titled Bad Baby Bad –it stunk.