The Boss Baby

Reviewed by: Nick Evans

Score: 5/10

Recommendation: Dollar Theater if you have kids otherwise maybe it will be free on Netflix

Summary: A swing and a miss, but hey, DreamWorks has a pretty looking swing.

Review:

The Boss Baby is the most recent film by DreamWorks Animation. It will be released to general audiences on March 31st, 2017. The film stars Alec Baldwin as Boss Baby and Miles Christopher Bakshi as his older brother, Tim Templeton. The film is directed by Tom McGrath who previously directed DreamWorks films such as Megamind, as well as the second and third Madagascar films. The Boss Baby follows a young boy named Tim who loves being an only child. His life is turned upside down when his new baby brother comes to live with his family because suddenly he isn't the center of attention. What's worse, this baby talks, wears a suit, and even has a job. The two must learn to work together to complete the baby's objective so that he can return to Baby Corp. and Tim can be an only child once again.

DreamWorks Animation is an interesting studio to me. DreamWorks will alternate between hits and misses in back to back films. Let's look at a small window of their films. They released Bee Movie (miss), followed by Kung Fu Panda (hit), then Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (hit), then Monsters vs. Aliens (miss),  then How to Train Your Dragon (huge hit). This inconsistency means you never know what you're going to get from them besides top of the line technical quality and artistic vision. To start this review with some positivity, let's look at the aesthetics of The Boss Baby. There are several scenes describing Tim's imagination. Through the strong colors, exaggerated crepuscular rays, and cartoony style, the film paints Tim's normal neighborhood into an adventure, just like children find excitement in the mundane. These shots are gorgeous and unlike anything you'll see coming out of any other animation studio. The style looks like a 1960's picture book or perhaps a more detailed/colorful UPA cartoon. These scenes stand out and are so much fun to watch. The animation throughout the film is great (as we've come to expect) and some of the lighting is inventive and fun. The overall technical quality of the film is simple, but in it's own right beautiful. It captures a childish view of normal life in an imaginative and creative way. Keep that in mind, because it might be easy to overlook the artistic quality The Boss Baby if you get distracted by that pesky story.

Listening to Alec Baldwin's voice come out of a baby is enough to entertain me for an hour and a half, but not enough for me to recommend that my friends spend their hard earned money on it. Baby butt jokes might be funny as a kid, but I'm not amused by predictable fart jokes anymore. Expect a lot of vomit/poop/fart jokes, most of it makes the characters less likable, even if it is a baby. The fact that the baby speaks and acts like an adult take away the amusing innocence that make burping babies cute, and leave us unsure if it is still endearing or just annoying. Another problem is the lack of characters. Outside of our two leads, everyone else seems pretty meaningless, especially the antagonist. They are pretty much just there by necessity and don't offer much to the story at all. Except for alarm clock, which is undoubtedly the best part of the film. That's all I'll say about that, but its pretty great.

The Boss Baby won't be the worst animated film of 2017, but by next year, it will be the most frequently forgotten (like The Angry Birds Movie from last year). As such I will award The Boss Baby my most lukewarm and forgettable score of 5 little glass pacifiers out of 10.