The Boss Baby... You know, as this one drew closer,
I realized it was giving me the same vibes that many older DreamWorks films gave me.
You know, the ones from a decade ago, like Bee Movie or Shark Tale,
where it feels like the concept went awry pretty early in development,
but they kept at it in the hope it would come together.
I'm prolonging getting down to it, let's just jump on in.
Things start out simply enough, with a seven-year-old kid, Tim,
happily using his imagination to make every day an adventure,
and adoring the utter devotion his parents give him.
Things change with the arrival of a new baby brother.
With his parents at the whim of this baby's every need, Tim starts to feel neglected.
Of course, that's leaving out the wacky elements, to say the least.
The baby is dressed like a businessman, and speaks in the gruff voice of Alec Baldwin.
Turns out he's one of a fraction of babies that, rather then sent to a family, is reserved for upper management.
But with babies not getting enough love due to, ahem, puppies,
the boss baby has been sent undercover to Tim's family.
Eventually, Tim agrees to help the boss baby with his mission,
as that means Tim can go back to the delightful life as an only-child he once had.
Before I start with all the points I'm bursting to make, I should point out that it is more comprehensible
then my description, and the ad campaign, makes it seem.
Many of us animation fans had been dreading this one for the longest time.
To break the ice, The Boss Baby is basically stuck in a place of reception that it can't get unstuck from.
Namely, a place where's it's surprisingly sincere and funny and perfectly painless to sit through,
and not nearly the horror show it looked like it was going to be,
but also kind of shallow and too caught up in its meaning at times and ultimately kind of tasteless.
It is, in short, a perfectly serviceable, average, DreamWorks film.
Normally, these don't produce much to discuss, but Boss Baby is quite the opposite.
As I mentioned before, a lot of the film directly takes place in Tim's imagination.
And it seems clear at first that Tim is just imagining all the wacky elements regarding his new baby brother.
It can be seen in the trailer. When Tim chases his brother,
what appears to be a high-speed chase is shown to actually be at a snail's pace.
But as it goes on, the film gets so involved in this concept of "Tim's imagining everything"
that it gets nigh-on impossible to know what's real and what's not.
It could certainly be argued that this is intentional,
and it's supposed to be an Inception-type idea where it doesn't ultimately matter.
But I don't think so, somehow. Basically, the concept of it all being imaginary
doesn't end up having enough to sustain 87 minutes, or at least not the way it's done here.
Now, this is all just conceptual analysis, and it doesn't matter much if the flick is funny, right?
Well, humour is subjective. The film looked to underperform for ages,
and then comes out of the gate with a $50 million opening.
Some of that's due to the long break since Lego Batman came out, of course,
but I'm convinced a decent chunk came from adults and parents who felt Alec Baldwin's character here
was a natural extension on the same shtick he did in 30 Rock,
or the wild stuff he's been doing impersonating another boss baby,
in a manner of speaking, on Saturday Night Live.
And really, it's exactly what'd you expect.
A fair amount of laughs, but just as often it zips from joke to joke and they just kind of hang there.
The adult jokes that got a laugh at my screening were the occasional work-related gag.
Otherwise, not a lot of reactions,
though the film is plenty referential to Baldwin's various roles, for what it's worth.
And one lengthy spoof sequence pulled off the act of being protracted enough to go back to being funny.
I always appreciate that.
Most of the other humor is toilet humor, naturally. And sure, given how prominent babies are,
that's just documentary realism, just the same way having young 20's males
being obsessed with, ah, "male tools", is in most modern R-rated comedies.
And there isn't nearly as much toilet humour as you'd expect, so there's that.
Aside from any of that, some of the messages are questionable.
The film never makes it clear
that what the babies misinterpret as love being too scarce to go around is just attention.
It just jumps to that conclusion later
and we the audience sort of realise in a jumble that it expects us to have done so too.
More so, it suggests a reality of working in a cubicle literally from conception to eternity.
And of course many people work in cubicles for decades, but can you imagine doing that from birth?
If, you know, you had he capability to do so. These are minor things, but they sure leapt out at me.
As regards the animation, the DreamWorks artists continue to showcase their talent as best they can.
Given there's every chance their budgets
will get financially downscaled with their future films under Universal,
this could be the last $100-million-plus feature of theirs for a while.
And while it doesn't have the splendid design, ambitious directing or tactile textures of Trolls,
there's plenty here for my tastes.
In particular, I quite like the vaguely retro-inspired design of the characters and buildings,
with the babies and Tim especially having old-school cartoon design
mixed with one of DreamWorks' more notable uses of anime eyes.
I can't really label any of this as overtly ambitious, but the artists totally deserve recognition for it.
And that's not even touching upon Tim's imagination sequences throughout,
which the ads have shown basically nothing of.
They're all very bold with shapes and colours, with large chunks of them succeeding
in the often-failed mission with big studio animation
of actually getting the concept art you see in the "Art Of" books on the screen
And it makes sense narratively, given how imaginative Tim is.
None of this is really enough to actively improve the film more then a notch or two,
but if you have the choice of a flick with poor visuals, or a flick with these visuals, is that even a choice?
It should be noted that the second half goes way off the rails, as once the duo start on the mission,
it's just a chaotic zip from one chase scene to another
with occasional forced sentiment like we get in so many animated flicks.
Except here it seems even worse, as it's almost a betrayal
of the more reserved thematic focus for the first half.
And when it does settle back into that better mode,
it's for a denouement that has to be one of the longest and most drawn-out in recent animated memory.
It was very nearly 10 whole minutes, and with barely half that in content.
Which is a roundabout way of saying whatever goodwill the film had fostered for me
sizzled up in the back half somewhat.
Again, I don't want to sound too hard.
There was quite a fair share of moments at my screening that had kids and parents chuckling alike,
which I view as a good sign, and parents will like it on the grounds of the messages it imparts at the end,
if they can help their child filter out the bad ones I mentioned earlier.
And hey, there's something to be said
for getting another animated film that could be a head object among the right age group.
I think one reason most recent big-studio animated films have been profitable
has to do with our modern film culture.
Used to be that there would be a fair share of live-action family films still suitable for young kids.
But so many films have been roughed up so they get a PG-13 rating and don't seem childish,
that true family options when your kids are under ten are limited outside of animated films.
So the last few DreamWorks films – Home, Trolls and this -
have, for better or for worse, being somewhat more child-geared then their past offerings,
which is kind of reminiscent of the direction Jeffery Katzenberg
wanted to push Disney Animation into back in the late 80's and early 90's.
And yet there's no denying there's nearly as much, maybe more, adult-geared humor in this one then child humor.
Given how it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been anticipating,
I can't really be too mad at any mistakes this flick makes,
even if I can't really muster up much enthusiasm for it either.
Alec Baldwin does the kind of wild turn adults will remember fondly,
and the rest of the small cast does a fine job.
The Boss Baby basically has such a mix of good,
average and annoying elements that it ends up being serviceable despite the wild fluctuation.
People will see it, a few will love it, some will hate it, a fair few will enjoy and defend it,
and many of us will just shrug and forget about it.
And with two months till the next animated feature – till three of them, at least in America –
this'll have to do for Easter.
Thanks for watching the review, folks. As always, I'm your host, Mike Culligan, of Cartoon Karma.
If you liked what you saw, leave a like or a comment, that'd be pretty neat. Subscribing would be even neater.
Or you can check out my other videos, where I cover animation of all shapes and
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All your choice, but it'd sure bring a smile to my face.
Until next time, folks.
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