Enfant terrible
Baby Boss is a movie only its corporate mother could love
is one of a handful of contemporary animated features that could have easily been live-action, requiring little to no CGI and few special effects. It employs only human characters, and its single fantastical conceit is tied to familiar things: babies, families, human creation and corporate culture.
premise is convoluted and complicated: babies are mass produced and slated either as “family” or “management,” depending on whether or not they’re ticklish (stay with me, now).
“Family” babies grow up like normal human beings, while “management” babies drink a special formula that lets them remain fully formed adults in baby bodies to help keep Baby Corp running. The company now faces stiff competition from puppies. Baby Corp is worried that if it doesn’t keep its numbers up, humans will no longer want babies.
It’s an absurd, silly premise, but it’s tied to a family story that makes it endurable. Tim (Miles Christopher Bakshi), a creative seven-year-old, loves his adoring parents but Tim feels threatened by the prospect of a new brother.
Who’d want a sour-faced baby voiced by Alec Baldwin as a younger brother? Tim is the only one who suspects Boss Baby (yes, that’s actually his name), is up to something. Boss Baby can certainly play cute when necessary, but he’s really the kind of slick, corporate shark Baldwin has played in a variety of roles.
The ambitious enfant terrible wants to nab the corner office. Because Tim doesn’t want a brother anyway, the two begrudgingly team up. Baby Boss’s undercover mission is to find Intel on Puppy Co.’s new dog breed that stays puppyish forever.
Through teamwork, the two brothers come to tolerate, like and even love each other (it hands Boss Baby his own existential crisis, deciding if management is really his calling after all).
Who is this movie’s demographic? Is it the parents, or the children? It remains to be seen Tom McGrath Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy Kimmel 97 min. if kids old enough to understand the story would find it interesting, and the film plays it low-key with physical humour, which could have made this more entertaining for younger kids.
I heard more adult guffaws than children’s chuckles. Tim is a pretty boring protagonist for kids — even his Gandalf-imitation alarm clock “Wizzy” has more personality.