Babies - 1 star out of 10

Babies - 1 star out of 10

"Babies" has the potential to make some bold statements about circumstances creating behavioral characteristics or about the innate human nature shared by every person in the world... but it doesn't.  Instead of a comparison of how four babies from four different countries (two rural and two urban) develop similiarly/differently, we end up with 4 interspersed sets of unrelated footage that tell very little.  Any sort of narration would have been welcome to compare their lifestyles but the director attempts to let the images speak for themself... and they do not say much.  Occasionally the images are thematically related but generally are not.  David Edelstein of New York Magazine said it best - "Presents itself as an ethnographic meditation on the first year of life but is better approached as an 'oooooh' and 'awww' fest..."  I don't know what I expected, but it certainly didn't involve this much breast-feeding and crying.  I should probably think through these things first.  At least I learned one thing from this documentary: Think twice before watching anything entitled "Babies," especially if you plan to watch it while consuming your lunch (even more so if your beverage of choice during lunch happens to be milk).