Who are you calling a dummy?
Perfect for holiday family fun, the Boss Baby is a clever, laugh-out-loud bundle of joy for kids AND parents
ALEC BALDWIN is on a roll. His peerless impersonation of Donald Trump on U.S. TV show Saturday Night Live has made him a legend in his own airtime, and here he is giving voice, splendidly, to a corporate moverandshaker disguised as a mewling infant in the funny and inventive The Boss Baby.
This DreamWorks animation, which in turn is based on a children’s book by Marla Frazee, is really about the displacement felt by a child when a younger sibling arrives.
i can recall it myself. The morning after our third child had been born, at home, we invited his older siblings to meet him.
His sister bounded up the stairs as fast as her little legs would carry her, while threeyearold Joe tarried, gazing out of the window and insisting he really needed ‘to look at the weather’.
He wasn’t ready to encounter a needier rival for his mummy’s time and devotion.
Tom Mcgrath, the director of The Boss Baby, takes that idea and runs with it. Sevenyearold Tim has a monopoly on his parents’ affection. every night at bedtime he has three stories, five hugs and a special song.
But that all changes when his baby brother arrives, which, of course, taps into another truth about newborns: that their demands come first. it’s not such a leap from there to a bossy baby with a briefcase who reads the Wall Street Journal.
actually, it is. it’s a huge leap. But it is presented with such charm and imagination that my wife, with whom i saw this, and i were chortling throughout.
THAT was in stark contrast, i might add, to most of the small children around us, who sat transfixed, but largely silent. This is one of those kids’ films aimed squarely at grownups. Hence the gags about Lennon and McCartney, the cook Julia Childs and, pricelessly, elvis Presley.
There is also a beguiling setup, usefully explaining where babies come from. They come, of course, from Baby Corp, a factory that sends most of them to join families — but those who don’t gurgle happily on being tickled with a feather go into management.
The newcomer who arrives in Tim’s home is one of the latter bunch, an executive who has an important job to do on behalf of Baby Corp.
The suits there are worried that new breeds of puppies are making dangerous inroads into the love previously restricted to babies and have ordered some highlevel industrial espionage to find out what their mortal enemies at Puppy Co are planning next.
Tim’s parents (voiced by Lisa Kudrow and Jimmy Kimmel) happen to work at Puppy Co, so that’s why the boss baby has been planted with them. if he succeeds in his mission, he will return to Baby Corp and win promotion to a corner office with a personal golden potty.
But before he can do so, he is rumbled by resentful Tim (voiced as a boy by Miles Christopher Bakshi and as an adult looking back by Tobey Maguire).
it’s huge fun, beautifully animated, and writer Michael McCullers, whose credits include a couple of the austin Powers movies, takes the opportunity to mine not just the rich seam of baby jokes, but an even richer seam of business jokes.
if you’re looking for some proper family entertainment this easter holiday and don’t mind laughing more than the children, i recommend The Boss Baby as a capital venture.
GOING IN STYLE, by contrast, is a real disappointment. Those irrepressible octogenarians Michael Caine and alan arkin, plus Morgan Freeman (a sprightly 79), play three codgers who have their pension rudely cut off and so decide to rob a bank.
it’s a remake of a 1979 film starring george Burns, art Carney and Lee Strasberg, which was written and directed by Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight run). From distant memory, it was rather better than this decidedly arthritic effort.
Caine plays Joe, who has lived in New York for decades, naturally without losing his Cockney vowels. after an efficient $ 1.6 million robbery takes place while he is in the bank confronting foreclosure on his home, he has the idea of springing something similar.
HIS PALS Albert (Arkin) and Willie (Freeman) agree to take part.
The steel company they all worked for has suspended its pension payments, so they decide to steal only as much as they’re losing to corporate greed and give the rest to charity. That way, director Zach Braff doesn’t have to worry about their shaky claim on the moral high ground.
it’s all amiable enough, with a jaunty score reminding us that we’re not to take it too seriously, but there aren’t nearly sufficient laughs to the gallon.
it’s also almost painful at times to think of Caine’s most famous cinematic bank robbery in The italian Job of blessed memory. Here, you might say he is heist by his own petard, since this picture is not even half as entertaining as that 1969 classic.
Mind you, the old boy does pull off his usual trick of barely appearing to act, yet somehow commanding the screen.
Freeman and arkin are great to watch, too, so it’s not like going in Style doesn’t have its pleasures, another of which is annMargret, who pops up as albert’s ageing (though still ravishing) girlfriend.
But as to which is creakier, the hips, the knees or Ted Melfi’s script, i’m afraid it’s a closerun thing.