The treatment of the baby is disturbing

there is no such thing as just entertainment. Entertainment expresses values, which is why most people would not welcome a movie explaining for instance, how slavery was good or women are biologically inferior to men. Most movies are not didactic like that but they drop hints about values and these hints influence people. A movie that hinted that race prejudice was not so bad for instance would be condemned, although the hint was just one line in the movie, like if a “good” character called another character by a racial epithet and the context suggested that was okay. Such a movie would disturb just a little our notions of the evils of racism and clear the way in our minds for more racism.

Now in this movie, our heroes encounter the baby in the closet. Bradley Cooper is playing a father, yet he says leave the baby there in an apartment with a tiger. What father would say such a thing? Indeed, what decent human being would, parent or not? It is not amusing. Then after putting the baby in various semi dangerous situations and not feeding him they finally find the mother, a whore who has not been the least concerned about her child’s whereabouts. And it is obvious we are meant to find that she is a likeable character.

The entire movie is callous and the fact that our heroes are friends and stick together does not make up for the stupid parts and the bad values parts. Why was it necessary to have a baby at all in the movie? Babies are not toys.