Plot
In Chicago, Bennington Austin "Bink" Cotwell IV is a nine-month-old baby who lives in a mansion with his socialite parents Laraine and Bennington Austin "Bing" Cotwell III. Just as Bink is about to appear in the social pages of the local newspaper, a trio of criminals, consisting of Eddie Mancuso, Norby LeBlaw and Veeko Riley, disguise themselves as baby photographers from the newspaper and kidnap Bink, holding him for a ransom of $5 million. At their hideout, Norby attempts to put Bink to sleep by reading his favorite storybook, Baby's Day Out, but falls asleep himself from boredom, leaving Bink unattended. Seeing a pigeon on one page of the book and then a real one by the window, Bink gets away from his kidnappers by following the pigeon out the window, prompting Eddie, Norby and Veeko to pursue him.
The FBI, led by Dale Grissom, arrives at Bink's mansion and try to piece together clues along with Bink's parents and his nanny, Gilbertine. Meanwhile, the criminals suffer from numerous near-death mishaps while chasing Bink across the city, who interprets various situations as scenes from his book, including boarding a blue bus; entering a department store where an employee mistakes him for another baby who escaped from the store's daycare center; escaping from the store afterward and heading to a zoo, where a western lowland gorilla shows a protective and paternal side towards him; and entering a construction site where, after experiencing more mishaps, the criminals give up on catching Bink and return home.
Bink's parents are notified of various sightings of him in the city. Gilbertine deduces he has been following Baby's Day Out and will most likely head for the old soldiers' home next, which proves to be correct as Bink has made his way there, where the elderly residents entertain him before Laraine and Bing joyously reunite with him. On the way home, Bink calls out for his book towards his kidnappers' apartment, where the recuperating criminals return Baby's Day Out before being arrested by the FBI for kidnapping Bink.
Back at home, Bink is put to bed by his parents, who discuss having his picture taken by a normal photographer in the morning. Unbeknownst to them, Bink wakes up and gets ready to read another storybook, titled Baby's Trip to China .
Production
Baby's Day Out was filmed in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California from August 17 to December 17, 1993, and featured one of the earliest fully computer-generated 3D cityscapes, which was a challenge for Industrial Light & Magic. Senior digital artist Henry LaBounta said: “We had to have a CG city – Chicago – for those shots where the baby’s looking down from the crane. I was the guy that was going to be making that city. And I was like, I just started here." Visual effects supervisor John Knoll responded "Yeah, but you’re the 3D expert guy," causing LaBounta to realize that he was coming in on his first show as one of the experts on the team, as most of the people he was working with only had experience with 2D compositing. [6]
Reception
Critical response
The film was generally received poorly by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a "Rotten" score of 32% based on 19 reviews. [7] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. [8]
Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of our, writing that "Baby's Day Out contains gags that might have worked in a Baby Herman cartoon, but in live action, with real people, taxis, buses, streets, and a real baby, they're just not funny. The Worton twins are adorable as Baby Bink, however; the audience produced an audible coo the first time they saw him on the screen." [9] However, his partner on the Siskel & Ebert show, Gene Siskel, liked the film, calling it an "absolute perfect child's-eye view of the fantasies that they might have." [10]
Writing for The Washington Post , Hal Hinson said that "the pace is quick and efficient but never frantic...almost everything in the picture is just right, including the two-bit crooks who abduct the superhero toddler and end up bruised and begging hilariously for mercy. Best of all, though, is the Binkman himself, whose tiny face is so expressive that he brings new meaning to the phrase 'conquering with a smile.'" [11]
Box office
The film opened with takings of $4,044,662 at the start of July 1994. [12] [13] [14] It grossed $16,827,402 at the box office in the United States and Canada and $13.4 million internationally [2] for a worldwide total of $30.2 million, a disappointing return considering its $48 million production budget.
International remakes and legacy
Baby's Day Out was a popular film in South Asia. [3] Recalling a visit to Kolkata in 1999, Roger Ebert said that the owner of a large theater told him that Baby's Day Out was their most successful film, running full for more than 17 weeks. [17] It was remade in Telugu in 1995 as Sisindri , in Hindi as Ek Phool Teen Kante in 1997, in Malayalam in 1999 as James Bond , [4] and in Sinhalese as Onna Babo in 2002.
Besides gaining a cult following, the film was mentioned in the 2026 Disney+ series Wonder Man . One of the actors in the film, Joe Pantoliano, also portrays a fictionalized version of himself in the series, where is shown to be unusually proud of the film to Simon Williams and Trevor Slattery's confusion. After being fed up with Pantoliano's condescending attitude towards Slattery, Simon scolds him before criticizing Baby's Day Out, saying "even a baby couldn't make you funny." [18]
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