Bang Bang Baby | Rotten Tomatoes

Bang Bang Baby

2014

1h 30m

Drama

Musical

Sci-Fi

List

67%

9 Reviews

Tomatometer

38%

50+ Ratings

Audience Score

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.

Read More

Read Less

Watch on Fandango at Home

Premiered Feb 29

Buy Now

Fandango at Home

Rent Bang Bang Baby on Fandango at Home, or buy it on Fandango at Home.

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

Post a rating

Jeffrey St. Jules

Director

Justin Chatwin

Bobby Shore

Peter Stormare

George

Jane Levy

Stepphy

Chloe Rose

Fifi

Sidney Leeder

Eleanor

Show Less Cast & Crew

Show More Cast & Crew

47%

37%

Young Ones

83%

50%

Diverge

88%

44%

Imitation Girl

TRAILER

for Imitation Girl

50%

34%

Jupiter's Moon

54%

90%

Clara

TRAILER

for Clara

Discover more movies and TV shows.

View More

View more photos

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

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: Christina Piovesan, Mark Gingras, Ethan Lazar, Lon Molnar
Screenwriter: Jeffrey St. Jules
Production Co: Intrepid Pictures
Genre: Drama, Musical, Sci-Fi
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Aug 10, 2016
Runtime: 1h 30m

Most Popular at Home Now