FilmSnobReviews

Title: Nasty Baby
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Sebastian Silva
Starring: Sebastian Silva, Kristen Wiig, Tunde Adebimpe
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
What It Is: Freddy (Silva) and Mo (Adebimpe) are thinking of becoming fathers. Freddy has been trying to impregnate his close friend Polly (Wiig) via artificial insemination. As the couple deal not only Freddy’s sterility, but a bigot neighbor simply named Bishop (Reg E. Cathey) who might just be a whole lotta crazy. To top it all off Freddy is currently working on a piece of performance art in which he plays an adult infant the project, titled Nasty Baby, is looking for a gallery opening.

What We Think: Produced by supporting actress Alia Shawkat this film not only stars Sebastian Silva, but he directs and writes this. You may have seen Silva’s work in the 2013 Michael Cera film Crystal Fairy and the Magic Cactus. This is about like that. Very meandering and aimless, Silva, as he is prone to do loses himself in exposition. Often times the Chilean seems like he doesn’t know where the script is going even though he wrote it. Most of the performances are nothing special, but I will note that for the second time in this year Tunde Adebimpe has impressed me. I reviewed Seven Chinese Brothers and there, he was likewise very good. Wiig is somewhat wasted, but I, for the most part, have enjoyed this “indie phase” she’s going through (see our reviews of The Skeleton Twins and Welcome to Me) and I hope she does more!

Our Grade: D, It fails to deliver much of anything in the way of coherence. I am not really going to be able to recommend this one to people. I was a little disappointed, but after seeing discovering what else Silva had worked on everything fell into place. Let’s hope that the two very talented co-leads are no longer have to deal with such a terrible piece of screenwriting.