The Boss Baby

RATING: F

What has happened to DreamWorks Animation? Sure, they were never really Pixar. Sure, they made the Madagascar franchise. And some of their movies do rely on more lazy/cheap humor. But they did have some good moments of their own at one time. The How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda franchises hold up with any other great computer animated movies. There have been a few pretty good one-off movies here and there as well that were sadly forgotten (Over the Hedge, Megamind). 

But lately things from them have just been straight up bad. In the last few years they have made that terrible "Home" movie, a quite underwhelming Mr. Peabody & Sherman movie, and that Trolls movie--which I have not seen, but to put things in perspective, I would rather watch this movie again rather than watch Trolls even for a first time. Ironically, the only good movies DWA has made lately are sequels. The last remotely above-average original movie they made was The Croods way back in early 2013--and even that movie just barely hit that mark. This movie, "Home," and others in their recent terrible lineup seem to indicate the company now pandering more to 5-year-old's--and not giving the adults something to enjoy like they used to. How unfortunate. 

I don't think you really need me to tell you that this movie is stupid. You look at the poster, watch the trailer, and you are probably already wondering as well what DreamWorks was smoking. Guess what? It is just as bad as it looks. This exists in a world where some babies, instead of being sent directly to families when being born, are sent to some alternate dimension called Baby Corp where they drink some formula that gives them the mind of adults while still in baby form and then they work in management or something. I'm not sure at all what their normal purpose is, but in this movie they are concerned that love for babies is disappearing across the world in the form of love for puppies due to a villainous corporation called "PuppyCo." And one of these "babies"--a "Boss Baby" who sounds like Alec Baldwin-- is sent to main character Tim Templeton's family, who immediately dislikes him. But the "Boss Baby" needs Tim's help to foil PuppyCo's evil plan to create a new puppy which will leave infants basically an afterthought.

I just watched this movie, but I honestly still cannot believe I just wrote that paragraph. I cannot believe that someone actually thought that any of this sounded like a good idea, that any of this made sense, that it did not sound weird to them after they wrote it, et cetera. This movie gives us lazy writing/jokes, frequent dumb sequences set in Tim's imagination that sometimes actually coincide with reality and sometimes don't and thus leaving one super-confused, terrible parents, and just that colossally stupid plot overall. The idea that puppies (despite their merits) could actually *replace* babies and make people forget about babies--parents apparently included--is actually arguably very insulting, and I'm not even a parent. 

Is this film without its moments? No, not completely. There were a couple of jokes that actually did make me chuckle. The Gandalf-based mannequin called "Wizzie" that Tim talks to now and then in his imagination was amusing. But such moments are very few and far between, and they do not make up for the stupidity one sits through pretty much the entire rest of the way. 

Ultimately, this movie sucks. There is no way around it. Which makes me all the more appalled that there might actually be a sequel to this--DreamWorks has flip-flopped a crazy amount in their schedule over the years though, so I'm holding out hope. Regardless, this is the kind of movie that is likely to drive adults to the brink of insanity if their kids actually like it. And you know what? When there are *tons* of better animated kids' movies out there, perhaps we should just draw the line and give the children better stuff to grow up on instead of letting them watch garbage like this. It's probably better for everyone involved in the long run.