'Infinity Baby': Seattle International Film Festival movie review
The latest offbeat venture into the absurd from director Bob Byington is the dystopian comedy "Infinity Baby" (screening during the 43rd Seattle International Film Festival).
In short: A comedy set in a world where a botched stem cell experiment accidentally created babies that don't age. Kieran Culkin, Kevin Corrigan, Martin Starr, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally and Stephen Root star.
The film opens with a child declaring that "Infinity Baby" is about what happens to one particularly baby girl - but nevermind that. Yes there's a baby tangentially involved, but this understated comedy follows two parallel stories. One thread follows Ben (Culkin), a serial dating cad who endlessly searches for "the one." The other thread tracks a pair of morons (Corrigan and Starr) working for Infinity Baby who scheme to take care one of the ageless babies for a quick payday.
This film is as utterly absurd as it is offbeat and low-key. The uber mundane screenplay is the true star of this film. The underlying dystopian world allows big pharma to pawn off ageless babies unto millennials who want to experience the "novelty" of parenthood without the long-term commitment. "Infinity Baby" uses that high-concept premise as a jumping off point to explore how such a world would handle the ageless babies, and more specifically, how or why anyone would want to have children at all. It's easy to imagine a version of this script without the "perpetual infant" conceit at all - and it would still take hilarious shots at the faux-pragmatic (read: selfish) reasons that compel adults to seek out or run away from parenthood.
"Infinity Baby" is a droll and biting swipe at the commitment-averse. It takes even-sided shots at the people who only want to have a baby to fill some emotional void as well as those who resist parenthood purely for selfish reasons. While the infant cannot age physically age, it's the three main characters who seem absolutely incapable of maturing at all. Even the prospect of changing the diaper of a baby - even one genetically modified to never cry and only poop once a week - overwhelms these underdeveloped slackers.
Final verdict: Low-key and absurd, "Infinity Baby" is a hilarious character study of the petulant man child. Byington's fans will appreciate a film that is tonally similar to his previous films ("7 Chinese Brothers" and "Somebody Up There Likes Me") but uninitiated viewers might be thrown by a movie that doesn't follow a conventional plot structure.
Score: 3/5
"Infinity Baby" screens during SIFF 2017. This comedy is unrated and has a running time of 71 minutes.
