Directed by: Tom McGrath
Starring: (voices of) Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, Miles Bakshi
I'm not sure which audience The Boss Baby is expected to appeal to. It doesn't have enough references and sly jokes to keep adults interested and a child wouldn't know what to make of a baby who shows up one day wearing a suit. The parents of Tim (Bakshi) don't seem to even notice this odd sartorial choice of their new baby, who apparently wasn't born the customary way, but manufactured by a company called BabyCorp and taxied right to the front door. The Boss Baby is high concept that stayed stuck at the concept stage.
Nonetheless, there is no point in arguing how or why The Boss Baby (Baldwin) showed up in Tim's household. We accept him as a fact of life and now he is stealing away all of the attention Tim used to receive from his doting parents. The Boss Baby is a demanding infant who runs his parents ragged. This is all by design, as The Boss Baby's intentions are soon explained, although not necessarily made clear. Tim's parents work for PuppyCorp, run by Francis E. Francis (Buscemi) which is expecting to unveil to the world a new breed of dog which will be so adorable that it will cause all parents to love it more than their babies. (I think). The Boss Baby's plan is to thwart this unveiling in Las Vegas and thus earn his long overdue promotion. He enlists Tim's reluctant help in doing so, since the quicker The Boss Baby gains his promotion, the quicker he will be out of Tim's life.
The filmmakers assumed the idea of a suit-wearing infant voiced by Alec Baldwin, who is experiencing a career renaissance by his SNL Donald Trump impersonations, would be enough to keep everyone amused and nothing else would need to be done with it. With such a confusing plot and even more confusing plot developments, mixed in with the obligatory sentimentality we could see coming a mile away, The Boss Baby is dead in the water. All of this is an ungainly fit.
The Boss Baby was clearly not made for me. Maybe children will get more out of it than I did, which is just as well. Some of the kids in the audience appeared to have a good time. I'm not going to be that guy who would try to keep you from seeing The Boss Baby, especially if you have younger children who may enjoy seeing this unusual baby in action. I wasn't much amused by it, but I'm hardly the authority on what would work for children.
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