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Bang Bang Baby

Play trailer Poster for Bang Bang Baby 2014 1h 30m Drama Musical Sci-Fi Play Trailer Watchlist
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67% Tomatometer 9 Reviews 38% Popcornmeter 50+ Ratings
In the 1960s, a teenager thinks her dreams of becoming a singer will come true when a famous musician is stranded in town, but when a chemical plant leak turns people into mutants, her dream turns into a nightmare.
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Bang Bang Baby

Critics Reviews

View All (9) Critics Reviews
Dave McGinn Globe and Mail Dream, nightmare or reality? Rated: 2.5/4 Aug 21, 2015 Full Review Bruce DeMara Toronto Star St. Jules clearly has talent. What he needs is a story that maintains its consistent level of zany wit from beginning to end. Rated: 2/4 Aug 20, 2015 Full Review Julie Crawford North Shore News (Vancouver, B.C.) Mutants, musical numbers and a roadkill beaver supper: welcome to the wacky world of Nova Scotia-born filmmaker Jeffrey St. Jules. Rated: 8/10 Apr 17, 2019 Full Review Stephen Saito Moveable Fest An auspicious debut for St. Jules, who has been building up to this with shorts, and one wonders what he could do on an even bigger canvas. Nov 15, 2018 Full Review Jared Mobarak The Film Stage The film, in effect, becomes a manifestation of humanity's knee-jerk reaction to laugh when scared. Rated: C+ Feb 27, 2016 Full Review Ken Eisner Georgia Straight Unfortunately, the filmmakers have little feel for the period or the genres they're spoofing, and the songs are mostly pretty bad anyway. Aug 25, 2015 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (8) audience reviews
Audience Member St. Jules must be saddened by the general misunderstanding of this richly metaphorical beauty, injected with multiple life lessons and strong, but cloaked, messaging. The Movie Info is terribly misleading and describes a simplistic, cartoonish plot. The bulk of the movie is a fantastical depiction of a young girls coping mechanisms as she transitions quickly from thinking she has a chance at real fame and escape, to the seemingly much darker reality of being trapped in a stifling family situation paired with an unintended pregnancy. The purple haze is, among other things, a metaphor for what made her pregnant. Bobby is a metaphor for "I deserve better". The end of the movie is so powerful, especially for those who have children. When her baby is born, it is very creepy. It talks and looks like her needy father. But, in reality it is a normal girl with a birthmark on her face, which she obviously originally despises, but eventually comes to unconditionally love. The connections to her coping on multiple levels, the purple mutating haze, and all the other strange diversions in the movie suddenly start to become clear. Bravo St. Jules. Very clever and creative take on a common theme. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/02/23 Full Review Audience Member Bang Bang Baby is an underrated gem of a movie with a story that tackles much more than it first appears to. With a charistmatic performance from Jane Levy and more than soild performances from co stars Justin Chatwin , Peter Stormare and David Reale this one more than deserves a watch. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Frances H Musical numbers and look of this film were nice, but the plotting was rather dull. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 03/10/17 Full Review Audience Member Catchy songs throughout, scenes that haunt and stick with you for years after viewing! Sometimes a bit cheap and cheesy, but it almost adds to the films' styling and authenticity. Beautiful way of fictitiously retelling a sad common truth we see too often in smaller towns and non urban hubs. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member A delightful pastiche of everything from Jacque Demy real life musical to David Cronenberg body horror, Bang Bang Baby shouldn't work, but miraculously does. It's a charming, whitty musical romp in glorious Technicolor (or at least as close as you can get now a days) with a few bizarre mutations thrown in. St. Jules embraces the strangeness and surrealism of it all as we are treated to people with bottles growing out of their stomachs, talking mutant babies and even a duet between the villian and the mouth growing out of his neck. It's so off the wall, that in the end it manages to loop back on itself to give everything a rational explanation. You might not think Bang Bang Baby is any good, but with so many layers it can't help but be intriguing. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member A 60s set, semi-sci-fi that is a metaphor for the elaborate mental gymnastics the girl does to justify marrying her rapist and dealing with the resulting child. That took a while after the film finished for me to process, as this is also a musical, it's all intercut with the highly energetic 60s pop style musical numbers as she both fends off her rapists and her mental projection of the famous singer she sometimes sees him as, all while her town is covered in a purple haze from a chemical factory malfunction that's mutating everyone. You can hopefully figure out the meanings of the above. So, yeah, this is not a film that will appeal to everyone, but as for me, there's a certain low-budget style and energy that carried me through a lot of the more WTF moments since it all seemed appropriately surreal, given how much of this was supposedly just her mentally coping with her situation. Still felt disjointed at times, with some jumps from one scene to a seemingly unrelated scene with no transitions. The acting's fine, especially given the surreal nature, but the audio mix was a bit off, with the songs VERY apparently being dubbed in later and the volume being off at times. Still enjoyable for what it is, even if I'm still not sure I'm interpreting it correctly. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Bang Bang Baby

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis In the 1960s, a teenager thinks her dreams of becoming a singer will come true when a famous musician is stranded in town, but when a chemical plant leak turns people into mutants, her dream turns into a nightmare.
Director
Jeffrey St. Jules
Producer
Don Allan, Daniel Bekerman, Jonathan Bronfman, Sidney Chiu
Screenwriter
Jeffrey St. Jules
Production Co
Intrepid Pictures, JoBro Productions & Film Finance, Scythia Films
Genre
Drama, Musical, Sci-Fi
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Aug 10, 2016
Runtime
1h 30m
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