The fourth Kandasamys installment may only appeal to viewers who've been there from the beginning, but no matter your history with the South African Indian series, The Baby really offers far too little. With unconvincing third-act drama and extremely loose connection tissue between scenes, it becomes very difficult to see what the point of all this is, unless you are truly charmed by the bickering of this dysfunctional family. Unfortunately there isn't any wit to the clashing of personalities here; these are characters who aren't even trying to get on the same page, so set in their stubborn ways that it becomes infuriating to watch them butt heads for no good reason.

Mariam Bassa's grandmother character, Aya, is somehow simultaneously the most entertaining and most annoying figure in this movie. Aya is unexpectedly sassy and modern for a woman her age, and is often the source of the mischief going on in the background behind everyone else's relatively serious issues. But the film leans way, way too hard on her, with every new one-liner from Aya becoming increasingly more grating and nonsensical. This is a character who's best taken in smart, deliberate doses; she's not meant to interrupt every scene with inane babbling. She deserves better than that, and Bassa deserves better than that.