Baby's Day Out

More and more, John Hughes' movies are becoming live-action cartoons — and his protagonists are getting younger and younger.

Hughes first burst on the movie scene with teen comedies like "Weird Science," "The Breakfast Club" and "16 Candles." Then he hit it even bigger with the pre-adolescent "Home Alone" pictures. Last year he scored again with a kindergarten-age hero in "Dennis the Menace." And now, in "Baby's Day Out," it's an infant.

What's next, "Adventures in the Womb"?

The slim storyline for "Baby's Day Out" is sort of "Savannah Smiles" meets "Home Alone," as a 9-month-old baby named Bink (played by the adorable Worton twins, Adam Robert and Jacob Joseph) is kidnapped for ransom by three bungling crooks, Eddie, Veeko and Norby (Joe Mantegna, Brian Haley and Joe Pantoliano, respectively.)

While Bink's wealthy yuppie parents (Lara Flynn Boyle, Matthew Glave) are working with police to find the child, most of the film focuses on Bink, as he unwittingly outwits the dimwits who have kidnapped him. The trouble is, writer-producer Hughes and first-time director Patrick Read Johnson show very little wit in developing the premise.

Things get cooking when Norby is assigned to read Bink's favorite book to him, "Baby's Day Out," in the hope that Bink will go to sleep. Of course, it's Norby who sleeps, while Bink crawls out a window, heads into the city and has a great time.

As Bink spots things he recognizes from the book — a bus, a cab, the zoo, etc. — he heads for them, with our trio of idiot crooks in hot pursuit. But even as Lady Luck seems to be watching over Bink, so that we know he's not in any real danger, luck consistently runs out for Eddie, Veeko and Norby — in fact it seems to slap them around like they're the Three Stooges.

In the zoo, for example, Bink is befriended by a gorilla, who shares his food with Bink and sleeps next to him. But when he awakens, the gorilla throws Eddie into the bars of a cage. In the park, as Eddie hides Bink under a blanket on his lap and converses with police, Bink gets a lighter out of Eddie's pocket and sets Eddie's crotch on fire.

And in the film's biggest set-piece, Bink rides up to the top of a high-rise building that is under construction. There, our trio of nogoodniks slip, fall, get hit in the head and suffer all kinds of indignities, while Bink seems to be having a great time.

That's the secret, of course. Hughes and Johnson wisely take a page out of "Raising Arizona" and continually show Bink to be giggling, smiling and generally enjoying himself. Even when he's rising hundreds of feet in the air on a steel girder, there's never really any feel of danger.

To that end, the special effects are excellent. But whether you will find any of this funny is another question. Frankly, I found it boring and stupid, when it wasn't simply vulgar and offensive.

And the children who attended the screening with me seemed to be divided. Everyone over 10 was bored, while those under 10 said it was terrific.

What can I say? Maybe I'm just too far beyond 10 to appreciate "Baby's Day Out," which is rated PG for considerable violence, albeit comic in nature, and some profanity and vulgarity.