‘The Boss Baby’ film review
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
4/5
In its opening weekend, the highly-anticipated Ghost in the Shell was beaten out by The Boss Baby (both released by DreamWorks Pictures), making The Boss Baby the first surprise hit of 2017.
Initially, I was not going to watch it because it did not look appealing to me. When I saw a commercial for the film and found out that Alec Baldwin plays the baby in it, I thought that it looked interesting. While the film did well in the box office, I wondered if it was great. So I went to the theater and saw it in 3-D.
Based on the book by Marla Frazee (yes, it is based on a book), Timothy (Tobey Maguire) tells his daughter about a time when he was young and the worst possible thing happened: He had a baby brother. When young Timothy (Miles Christopher Bakshi) finds out that the baby (Baldwin) talks, the baby tells him that he works for a company called Baby Corp and he is on a mission to find out why people are loving puppies more than babies. This leads them undercover in Timothy’s parents’ workplace at Puppy Co., and at the same time, Timothy learns that having a brother is a great thing.
Alec Baldwin is great as the Boss Baby, and he fits the role very well. There were a lot of jokes in the film that were very vulgar, so the film could be funnier for adults than for children, though this film is a children’s film. The jokes were as vulgar as the jokes that Alec Baldwin says on the new Match Game (still on ABC). The film’s heavy use of the Beatles song “Blackbird” created the funniest joke of the entire film: When Timothy tells Boss Baby that this is the song that his parents sing to him before he goes to sleep, Boss Baby responds with, “So, your parents are Lennon and McCartney.”
The world of the film is unusual because it takes place in the present day, though it still looks like the 1960s. Timothy’s imagination is similar to the flashback sequences in Kung Fu Panda. The 3-D in these sequences add more depth to the scenes, and there are 3-D effects throughout the film that will make you wish that you had seen it in 3-D if you chose to see it in 2-D.
Overall, The Boss Baby did not wow me that much. Most of DreamWorks Animation’s recent films are not that great story-wise, including Trolls (which does have a great theme song by Justin Timberlake). But the studio’s next film Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (also based on a book) could be great, though I question the casting of Harold and George with adult voice actors instead of kids.
While Boss Baby has a lot of funny jokes, if you do not like too much vulgarity, do not see this film.
