Dead Babies

A terrible storyline (Amis at his worst), pointless and self-conscious 'decadence', obvious shock tactics and patchy acting make this film (rather like "Rancid Aluminium") embody everything that went wrong with the much-vaunted British film revival. The humour is, at best, limp, and the pretentiousness of the whole set-up (including some kind of "internet terrorist group" - ooh, how contemporary) really begins to grate.

Final summary - a half-baked attempt to be 'edgy' that does no-one any favours. Still, it's always a pleasure to see Katy Carmichael on screen...

Having been an avid Martin Amis fan for many years I was understandably excited when this film came out. Although I never caught it at the cinema, indeed, I didn't know it existed until it was on television two or so years ago.

The most important aspects of a film adaptation are present: the characters stayed true to those in the book, no vital points were missed out and the director took the same perspective on life and the book as Amis did.

If the Marquis de Sade were to crash one of P. G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this film. The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged. But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies". Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon

I fear the author of the previous review assumed that this film would be a cheap horror, as I'm sure many people have owing to the somewhat dubious title. However, the term 'dead babies' was used in the book to mean 'dreary spasms of reality', the unpleasant facts of life that invariably must be dealt with sooner or later, and thus I can use this review as a platform to ward away hammer horror fans.

Instead rent or buy this movie if you want an ingenious dark comedy with a kick. I loved it!

A group of friends all met when they were in college. Quentin has since married a girl with money and enjoys his free life of drugs and sex; Keith has been in a mental institution and is not better now that he is out, Giles has an inheritance and a major drink problem while Andy and Diana are married but the drugs have significantly reduced their sex lives. Into their lives come two Americans and a messed up guy called Skip, bearing new powerful drugs and promoting their particular brand of bisexual group sex. As if things were going to be weird enough, someone called "Johnny" is leaving bloody threatening notes around the house.

The word on this film is that it is bad, really bad. With this knowledge I didn't have high hopes but watched it anyway and must say that I don't think it is bad as such, or at least it deserves a better description than that one word. Instead I came to think of it as more than one word and several that come to mind include pointless, dated, cheap, tiresome and excessive. If the plot seems pointless it is because it is; eventually it will get to something about a conceptualist group on the internet but by the time it does you will not care that even that is stupid and pointless. Instead the film spends most of its time trying to be shocking, whether it is sexually, violence-wise or just with the way it treats the characters. With so much pointlessness it is hard to care about or even be interested in the characters – just as well since they are cartoon wide-boys and clichés taken from other films.

The shock value is all here and what a shame it is that none of this stuff is that shocking any more – drugs are a norm for many people, sexual taboos are gradually vanishing and the idea of drunken parties full of excess will be known to many who went to university to get just that. Seeing them on screen allows things to be excessive but they are not shocking or interesting – eventually they just get tiresome and boring. The director has clearly seen Trainspotting and is trying to get as close to it as he can, but sadly he has forgotten that substance should come first – get the audience into the film, then they will care enough about the action to actually give you an emotional response of some sort. Sadly, without this it just seems stupid and the end of the film couldn't really come soon enough! The cast are a very strange mix, with some faces in there that are better than this and some I only know from sitcoms and made a strange find. Bettany is always interesting but here cannot do anything to raise the material. However he is head and shoulders above the rest of the cast who are pretty poor thanks to the material they are given, Condou gets the closest to an interesting and sympathetic character but the rest just go along with whatever nudity, shouting or excess they are required to do – none of them convince and none of them add anything.

Overall this is not a bad film if you are a teenager looking for something that is supposedly "edgy" and "different"; however the majority of us will just feel like it was a grind from start to finish with nothing of value along the way. Without a plot, script or even characters it is no wonder that it so totally failed to engage me and just ended up being tiresomely gory and excessive for no reason and providing nothing of value. A pretty terrible film but one that deserves more description than just being "bad".

I am a great fan of Martin Amis, on whose book this film is based. Unfortunately the director has been unable to translate the book to the screen. The novel is thoroughly post modern and highly artificial in its wildly overblown characters and the disintegration of traditional plot line and character development. It is an hilarious examination of human greed, excess and emptiness by one of the most moral of contemporary British writers. The director of the film has completely missed the point of the novel. In his hands, the film screams along at breakneck speed, indulging in every known trick shot and 'odd' camera angle possible. It is like Ken Russel on acid, and suffers from that older director's self indulgence cranked up to a hundred. Not even the (brief) glimpse of gorgeous actor Christian Solimeno's penis was enough to save this wretched film for me. Abysmal!

Friends and I picked this up from the rental place because of the name, and Paul Bettany. It was just woeful. Shallow, terrible plot/character development, nothing whatsoever to encourage watching it. I thought it was trying the whole time to be edgy and Trainspotting-esquire, but it failed on the basic level of having no content worthy of giving up two hours of time. The characters were distasteful, but not in the way intended (ie. not because of clever writing, more because they were so badly written as to be insulting) We only got through it thanks to a full bottle of Smirnoff and Paul Bettany in a blue pinstripe suit. Just terrible.