Casa de los Babys (DVD)

I missed Casa de los Babys in the theater and I am really not all that upset about it, primarily because this is an intriguing story and a well acted movie that, unfortunately, goes no where.

What you have here is the story of six women that become "friends" since they are all down in Mexico getting their mandatory two month residency so they can adopt a child.

You see, it is much easier to adopt in Mexico rather than the US, and the majority of the women are incapable of bearing a child of their own.

Along the way we are also introduced to a young Mexican boy living on the streets and a man who seems to wants desperately to get out of Mexico and live in Philadelphia.

So there we go, eight characters in a 90 minute movie, and all of them demanding that you get to know them and care for them by the end of the film and that is where the movie fails.

By fails, I mean that you never really get enough information about each character to really actually care about what happens to them, and even if you did you aren't given enough information as the movie goes along to make any assumptions as to what happens to them once the movie ends.

If you listen to the special featurettes included on the DVD and the director commentary during the film you will see that the vague nature of the film's final resolution was intentional, which would be okay if the audience was at least given some direction on where each character was going, but, as I said, you are not.

This is important because writer/director John Sayles had such a brilliant cast of women to play the parts that he didn't allow for enough time for us to get to properly know them. It is rare for me to suggest that a movie be longer, but this one could have used another 30 minutes or so.

The movie itself aside, the special features are extremely redundant as there are three special featurettes in the Bonus Features section, all of which are approximately 30 minutes and extremely similar, I swear if I hear why the movie was shot in Acapulco one more time I am going to have to strangle something.

The best of the three, especially since the movie is so vague, would have to be "The Making of Casa de los Babys" Featurette, which is not really a "making of" as much as it is a testimonial of the actors in the film giving their personal opinion and insight into the film and their characters. This is only interesting since we didn't really learn enough about them in the film and it is good to hear what they thought of the characters. It is also pleasant because all the actors did an outstanding job especially the youngest of them all Maggie Gyllenhaal, who I can only hope will be in more and more films.

The "Beyond Borders" and "On Location with John Sayles" Featurettes are too similar to really be interesting, but if you pay close attention you will get a little out of each of them.

This isn't exactly a movie I can recommend you buy, but if you do happen to pick it up you will be happy that the special features are there to give you a little more than what the movie was able to offer you, even if you have to hear several things over and over again.