The Boss Baby

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Now that I'm three years into this site, I have decided to start taking a look back, starting with movies that I wanted to check out, but missed out on, from 2017. First up is 'Boss Baby', which I wanted to see mostly due to people meeting it completely in the middle. It doesn't seem to be overly loved, but at the same time, this thing got nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar, somehow overshadowing 'The Lego Batman Movie' for that nomination. This film is just plain mysterious, to me, but at the same time, I can't honestly say it's as terrible as people let on.

We open with some narration from a grown-up Tim Templeton (Tobey Maguire), recapping the story from his childhood in which he encounters the Boss Baby (Alec Baldwin). As a 7-year-old boy, Tim had an awesome life, with a great imagination fueling his fantasies that he plays out with some great, loving parents (Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow). They even have a special song they sing for him at night before bed ('Blackbird' from The Beatles). But then, his new adopted baby brother arrives, which takes away from the attention Tim's parents give him.

One night, Tim hears someone talking in his brother's bedroom, only to sneakily discover that his new baby brother is having a phone conversation. Realizing that the Boss Baby considers himself in charge of the whole family, Tim wants to expose this to his parents, and tries to get proof, leading to your typical sibling squabbles. But soon, they have to put their differences aside, when *deep breath* it's revealed that the head of a literal puppy company (Steve Buscemi) threatens to tilt the desire to have puppies over babies in his favor. With a puppy convention just days away, the brothers team up to stop the guy, lest the boss baby revert to just being a regular baby and, yeah.

That's where the movie loses me. It's just so damn weird to imagine that the human beings of this world are over-all desiring getting puppies instead of babies. Not only that, but what about cats? One word - YouTube (or is that two?) But I digress. The point is, the whole threat in this movie makes next to no sense to me, thus kinda rendering the movie pointless. And then there's the way it ends, which I won't spoil, but it furthers the idea that there wasn't much of a point to the film. This is actually done through a couple of reveals, and it honestly makes me wonder what they were thinking.

But like I mentioned before, I still don't see this one as being as terrible as it was received by so many. A lot of the innuendo is surprisingly suggestive, and I'd be lying if I said it never made me laugh. However, that just proves that the film doesn't really have a specific target audience. It looks so cute, and one would imagine its harmless for kids. But kids are impressionable, and if they said some of this stuff on the school playground, they just might get a talking to. But there's a good chunk of this that's aimed at adults, quite clearly.

My feeling was that it was trying to be like 'Shrek', putting in some funny, grown-up bits. But there's a difference between a bird singing to the point of exploding, and a baby telling his brother to put something in his mouth and suck it. Sure, he's talking about his pacifier. But imagine your kids watching this, and you walk by, listening to that conversation out of context. It gave me a good laugh, but it was a cringing laugh in which I fully realized that this wasn't necessarily aimed at kids, despite its cute, animated design.

I'm glad that I went back to check this one out, and I wasn't bitterly disappointed, but it's a hard one to review. Most of what I've said about this one has been negative, and any positives were based on a morbid, personal taste. So I guess I'd recommend that a parent check it out before exposing it to their kids, and then use your discretion. It was okay, but for the life of me, I still can't fathom its Oscar nomination. It leans so close towards a 2, but I'd be flat out lying in suggesting that I didn't like it one bit. It has its moments, but the bottom line is that, as I mentioned before, it's just a mysterious damn movie, and I really can't tell who its for. I guess it's just one of those "gauge it for yourself" titles.

​3/5

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