Thoughts : Infinity Baby (2017)
At some point late in the night after my brief trek though Amazon Prime, my homeboy Billy texted me with an enthusiastic recommendation for Infinity Baby. Oddly enough, this film was already in my ever-expanding queue, and I’d more than once considered finally watching it. With a recommendation from a movie lover that I trust, the time seemed right to dive in.
Ben (Kieran Culkin) is a manager at Infinity Baby, a company run by his uncle Neo (Nick Offerman) that specializes in the adoption of babies that don’t age. Ben finds it hard to focus on his managerial duties, however, due to a string of surface level relationships with young women like Alison (Trieste Kelly Dunn) and Theresa (Noel Wells) : women that are kind and loving, but moving too fast in Ben’s mind. His idea of handling these ‘relationships’ is having the young women visit his ‘mother’ Hester (Megan Mullally), a woman he pays to play the part of his mother and grill the women until they accept a breakup. Meanwhile, Infinity Baby salesmen Malcolm (Martin Starr) and Larry (Kevin Corrigan) devise a scheme to make money off of a baby they fail to sell to a potential customer. As time passes, each set of these characters sinks deeper and deeper into their farce, heading full speed towards life-altering breaking points.
The concept of love in a cold world is subtly (although not so subtly at times) presented, with the moral seemingly being that growth as a person can come from something as simple as human connection and compassion, presented in the form of a hug in this film. Not only does it merely take a simple hug to bring down Ben’s well built wall of farce, but a simple hug also seems to breakdown the complete scientific/systematic makeup of the baby that Malcom and Larry keep for themselves, allowing her to cry for the first time and eventually grow up. This also sends Larry down an alternate path of immediate growth, while Malcolm shifts allegiance to the baby, growing with her (in terms of character maturity) as she grows into a young woman.
The recent aesthetic choices directors have been making for the ‘near future’ in films has been consistent and intriguing : black and white, sleek architecture, lots of glass and mirrors, and set design that leans heavily on white or black walls. This clinical, generic aesthetic really helps put story ideas and characterization front and center, as the initial wow factor quickly wears off, leading to our characters almost coming off as moving images on a canvas. The absence of a diverse color palette informs us on the general coldness of the majority of the characters that populate this world. The look of this film makes me think it would play great as a double bill with the similarly structured 2015 release Creative Control.
Kieran Culkin’s gifted ability to play almost any role with a casual grace makes him infallibly believable, and one of the most consistently solid character actors of our generation. Nick Offerman’s warm but firm presence is applied beautifully to his role of Neo, allowing him to come off as almost omniscient and omnipotent despite essentially spending the entire run of the film in a singular location. Megan Mullally’s directness and bluntness is presented full force, allowing an almost jolting shift when she breaks character near the film’s conclusion. Martin Starr and Kevin Corrigan pair extremely well together, with each of their offbeat and unique approaches playing off of one another in masterfully playful ways. Trieste Kelly Dunn is infinitely (no pun intended) adorable and assured, displaying full knowledge that Kieran Culkin’s character has traits that are much less than desirable and still choosing to show him love. Brief appearances from Noel Wells, Zoe Graham and Stephen Root also stand out.
I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to Infinity Baby, as the lion’s share of the cast are actors and actresses whose work I enjoy very much. The Austin connection via director Bob Byington doesn’t hurt either. If you find yourself lost within the vastness of selection that Amazon Prime offers, you may be doing yourself a favor giving this one a shot, as it deserves to be seen much more so than talked about.
