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Casa de Los Babys

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 4 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: John Sayles
Directed by: John Sayles
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 19, 2003
DVD: April 13, 2004
Running Time: 95 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Mexico
Summary
RATING: R for some language and brief drug use
Starring Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Steenburgen, Rita Moreno, Lili Taylor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Susan Lynch, and Pedro Armendáriz Jr.
A poignant, sharp, insightful look at clashing cultures, modern maternity and the mystery of fate. (IFC Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Honeydripper Lone Star Silver City Sunshine State
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
John Sayles's heartrending new film is a many-splendoured thing.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Sayles accomplishes another of his coups here. Eschewing all sentiment, avoiding all pathos, keeping his film and most of the women hard as nails, he manages to tell a compelling story.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
But Babys also resembles "Sunshine State" in another, more satisfying way: It leaves you longing to know what happens to these characters once the movie ends.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Babys is intellectually stimulating and emotionally stirring, a rare combination these days, though hardly unusual for writer/director John Sayles.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Sayles handles this material with gentle delicacy, as if aware that the issues are too fraught to be approached with simple messages.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Sayles seems to be trying, single-handedly, to correct centuries of First World self-centeredness in Third World contexts.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
If Casa de los Babys isn't necessarily a fully realized film, it's still a deeply felt glimpse into dizzyingly complex political and psychological forces that shape the most crucial decisions of a woman's life.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Some of the pieces in its jigsaw puzzle are too fragmentary, and there's a sense of racing against time to fill in the blanks. Yet the movie's even-handed portrayal of two cultures uneasily transacting the most personal business resonates with truth.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Marcia Gay Harden is an angry vulgarian who steals shampoo off the maids' carts and bribes a lawyer to get her baby. Sayles may not have planned it this way, but Harden makes crassness as powerful as any maternal instinct.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
But the movie goes absolutely nowhere. It allows us to be a fly on the wall to a whirlwind of gossip, confessions and intimate moments. But when the ending comes, it's an epic letdown. It's just so much Oprah-esque eye candy, without a point of view, or a plot.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Asks questions worth pondering. I only wished the writer-director-editor answered more of them.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Admittedly, mediocre Sayles is still watchable, but, relative to expectations, Casa de los Babys is a disappointment of significant proportions.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Unlike most Sayles movies, the filmmaker no sooner introduces his memorable characters and deeply resonant themes than his From Here to Maternity melodrama abruptly ends.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Hobbled by weak argumentation, a character who winds up a complete muddle, and Sayless inclination to romanticize Latin American revolutionary types, Casa is as mixed an effort as the filmmaker has essayed in some time. [October 2003, p. 18]
Time Richard Schickel
This wisp of a movie turns out to be more thoughtfully affecting than many a more high-flying film.
Read Full Review >Village Voice David Ng
The screenplay's clutchy banter (interspersed with arias of teary confession) feels distinctly Oprah, but Sayles extracts unexpected life from his wooden setups.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
There is often not enough space for all these personalities to truly play out. They tend to become types rather than people, representatives of classes and points of view more than individual human beings.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
It's a bit more than the film can handle without leaving loose ends dangling, and though it's never preachy, Sayles' political message-sending sometimes comes across too clearly for its own good. He makes valid points, though, particularly when he lets his storytelling do the work for him.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Sayles is rarely a bore, but occasionally he frustrates more than he delights, enlightens or challenges. Such is the case with Casa de los Babys.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Though ultimately something less than the sum of its parts, the film's performances are reason enough to see it.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
As usual, Sayles's dialogue scenes are as shapely as blown glass, but none of the characters' predicaments has been adequately explored, much less resolved, when the final freeze-frame arrives.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
What Sayles gives us is a jumble of ideas and stunning performances that never coalesce into a satisfying movie.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
Written and edited by Sayles, "Casa" is certainly the artist's baby, but he crams too much into a relatively brief running time. Worse, though it should be longer, we're not especially unhappy that it isn't, for being around these women gets tedious.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A creeping equanimity is taking over the work of John Sayles, a quality that in personal terms might be wise and coolheaded but in terms of drama is absolute death.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
It's too big an ensemble to provide enough back story for each player. But Sayles doesn't give his characters easily digestible labels, like "kook" or "pathetic loser."
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A typically well-acted, if ultimately minor, effort by John Sayles, the socially conscious indie icon who's unafraid to take on unfashionable subjects.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Chuck Wilson
The women are terrific -- they know a thing or two about modulating pathos -- and watching them is a pleasure, even if the lines they're speaking sound like those of a world-worried, first-time playwright.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
The cast is first-rate, but each is given a single note to play.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Casa feels like a miss. The digging into each of these women's lives stays shallow and seldom uncovers anything unexpected.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
An entirely schematic treatise on maternity and conflicting cultures. A subject perhaps far more suited to documentary treatment, this numbingly earnest effort will be a laborious delivery for IFC.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
For all his patient, accumulative storytelling, Sayles yields little that doesn't feel trite or overly schematic.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it an 8:
To strengthen the case that Americans are practicing cultural imprealism by the adoption of overseas babies, writer/director John Sayles should've pursued the potential story of a roofer who has eight children, as a counterpoint to the illiterate, glue-sniffing orphans that dot the Guatemalan streets. His story is important to help mount the argument that these local children don't need to be saved by prospective mothers from the United States. "Casa de Los Babys" fascinates when we see these women behave badly without being aware of it. There's the woman who puts a native on the defensive by assuming he has no geographical knowledge of our country; and the woman, who happens to be the kindest of the bunch, cruelly gives a homeless kid some book (about a goat!) he can't read, instead of something useful like food or money. It's too late for the boy, so, in essence, Eileen (Susan Lynch) unknowingly taunts him. Jennifer is even more clueless. She's worried about offending her tour-guide by paying him more than the stated charge of four dollars, but fails to take stock that the greater offense is her condescending attitude towards him. Jennifer assumes he's uneducated, so she explains that D.C. is a district. If one of the mothers was African-American or Hispanic, "Casa de los Babys" would've seemed more like a screed against Americans, but since they're all white (Eileen is from Ireland), the conflict is more racial, than cultural or social. "Casa de los Babys" annoys, but it made me think.
