Oh DreamWorks, where did you go wrong? As most of you know, DreamWorks has been really struggling recently to come up with a very good animated movie after Disney started turning out some fantastic movies. Recently, DreamWorks has made some bad duds like "Home" and "Trolls" and sadly, "The Boss Baby" is yet another one. While it's nowhere near as bad as the previous movies and the appalling marketing of the film made by Fox, it's still left me feeling very confused and pretty shocked. I'll try to explain why that is because honestly, it's really hard to say why.
Timmy Templeton (Miles Bakshi) is living a happy life with his parents Ted and Janice (Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow). That is until the new baby "brruuuuu-tthhhher" (this is an actual "joke" from the movie) arrives. The Boss Baby (Alec Baldwin) as he is known by, starts to take up Timmy's precious time with his parents, which makes him very jealous. After discovering the baby's secret that he can apparently talk, it is revealed that he works for a company called Baby Corp., a sort of business in the clouds run by, you guessed it, babies. It is then revealed that the Boss Baby is trying to uncover a secret plan from the companies rival Puppy Co. who is planning to reveal a new puppy to rival the cuteness of babies. Wanting to leave the house so he can get promoted at his company, the Boss Baby teams up with Timmy to uncover the secret of Puppy Co. before it's too late. That was my best description of the plot because it was so confusing to follow.
The idea of the movie itself is pretty stupid. After seeing some of the horrible trailers for the film, I immediately thought DreamWorks had hit rock bottom in their film department. Then after doing some research, I discovered that this film was inspired by a picture book written by Marla Frazee which clarified a lot of problems I had with the movie. If the film had been released as a twenty-minute short film with the Puppy Co. elements removed, I think it would have had a better chance. However, since the elements are present, the film just felt like it was stretched thin. As for the animation, it's awful. I mean terrible. It tried to be cartoony and over the top and I think it went way overboard which made it pretty painful to watch. Also, the film clearly was meant to be viewed in 3D, but because I saw it in a typical 2D showing, the elements that are supposed to pop out of the screen just looked awkward. As for the characters, there mostly unfunny. The kids will get bored by the business talk while adults might get shocked by some of the jokes. One joke that absolutely shocked me was a joke involving religion. What were they thinking when they put that in? Also, while I think Alec Baldwin can be funny at times, he felt really out of place as the baby. He's supposed to play the younger brother of a seven-year-old boy yet the older version of Timmy was played by Tobey Maguire who's nearly twenty younger than Baldwin. Isn't that ridiculous? The other actors like Lisa Kudrow and even Jimmy Kimmel who made me laugh out loud at the Oscars didn't have anything funny to do in the film. The only notable exception is Miles Bakshi whom I felt was perfectly cast as Timmy and actually did make me chuckle a bit.
"The Boss Baby" just felt like a confusing and dull waste of time. I feel really bad for the director, Tom McGrath, who has made many good movies in the past with DreamWorks, but sadly he didn't bring the humor and charm of his previous movies into this film. If you want a better movie that focuses on babies, just rent "Storks". However, if your kids really want to watch this movie, it's not a bad movie to put on to distract the kids. Just don't expect a lot out of it.
