The Movie: The Baby (1973)
What Is It?: For
most of its 85 minutes, this tale of an adult baby and his weirdo family is
really hard to assess. The premise is wack-a-doo, but the rather excellent
acting from the totally committed cast and the moody direction by seasoned T.V.
director Ted Post kind of rule out the possibility that it’s a bad movie.
Still, it’s hard to peg as a good movie, because the raw ingredients—a
twenty-something man crawling around and cooing like a six-month old, his
mother’s hard-to-swallow motivations, his sister’s increasingly strange
behavior, a baby-sitter who gets a little too into Baby’s urge to
breastfeed—seem to sound the “bad movie” alarm. The Baby doesn’t divulge its true quality until its final reel,
which reveals a completely unexpected twist that is— no exaggeration—
brilliant.
Why Today?: On
this day in 2013, director Ted Post
dies.
