Review: "The Boss Baby: Family Business"

 

I’ll give “The Boss Baby: Family Business” credit for not taking the most obvious route possible for a sequel to the 2017 animated hit.

That would have been to just bring back suit-wearing baby genius Ted Templeton (voice of Alec Baldwin) for another whacky adventure with his older brother Tim, the only one who knows he can talk and secretly is an agent for the shadowy BabyCorp company, which protects the interests of tykes. Last time they were taking on the onslaught of cute puppies, so this time it’d have been kittens or some other adorable.

Instead, they jump the story a few decades into the future in which Tim (James Marsden) is now a stay-at-home dad to two daughters while Ted is the ultra-rich CEO of a corporation who never stops working, sending “inappropriately generous” gifts in his stead, like a baby pony. Tim’s toddler, Tina (Amy Sedaris), is now a Boss Baby while his 7-year-old, Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt), is attending a very fancy school for high-achieving kids.

True, Ted and Tim do get zapped back to their kiddie forms so they can infiltrate the school and investigate its oddball principal, Dr. Erwin Armstrong, voiced by the very odd (in a good way) Jeff Goldblum. But I liked that director Tom McGrath and screenwriter Michael McCullers keep the focus on Tim’s desire to be there for his girls, while the antagonism with his brother (mostly) takes a back seat.

There is a funny and somewhat pointed subtext about the way parents care too much about their offspring being overachievers instead of just… kids. Tabitha’s school, which is being replicated all over the country, looks like a cross between an Apple store and prep academy for 1-percenters.

Armstrong is a visionary, who looks like kooky curly-haired professor but thinks that competition between kids is always healthy. Tim is surprised to find that Tabitha, who had been pushing him away lately and eschewing “little kid” things like singing and hugs, is being bullied by some other students following Armstrong’s teachings a little too earnestly.

Of course, there’s a surprise in store with Armstrong’s ambitions extending much further than just making kids smarter, but using smartphone apps to ensorcel their parents into zombies so they don’t get in the way so much. He also isn’t all that he appears to be, or at least not most of him.

This a fast-moving, breakneck-paced movie filled with lots of action and color. There are baby ninjas and musical numbers and tunnel chases and double-crosses and so on. Ted’s gift pony turns out to be a hard-charging stallion that continually saves the day.

Frankly, it was a little too much for my middle-aged brain to take in all at once. It’s the perfect speed for kids, though, and my 7- and 10-year-olds were mightily entertained.

“Nine out of 10,” judgeth the eldest, though I’m sorry to tell DreamWorks that Rotten Tomatoes won’t let me add that in as a corollary rating.

#Oscars90 reaction

They started the 90th Academy Awards ceremony a half-hour earlier but still didn't wrap things up until nearly midnight. I'm an Oscars junkie, but four hours is just too damn long for an awards show. Suggested areas to cut:

• Let the winners ramble in. But pare down the presenter banter. Especially when only about 50% of the jokes land. Think Harrison Ford: walk out, a line or two introducing the category, then reel off the nominees.
• Any presenter who appears to be altered/nervous/insane/senile. Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Wes Studi...
• Full-on Best Song performances. I'd prefer a montage of the actual theatrical version of the song played against footage from its film. Maybe one minute each. This would have the benefit of eliminating horrendously off-key live performances by stars who don't sound so great when they're not in a recording studio getting 30 takes for each phrase. 
• Gimmicky jokes that take 10+ minutes to execute, like having stars go next door to shoot hot dogs at "just folks" so they can be appropriately dazzled by having showbiz gods in their midst. 

Overall, I was pretty happy with how the awards played out. Not a whole lot of surprises... which is in of itself, something of a surprise. I was planning on at least one Mark Rylance-style out-of-the-blue win.

I managed to run the table in my predictions in the "major" categories (Pictures, Director, screenplays, all four acting awards) but didn't do so great among the more technical awards. I got 15 out of 24 categories correct, which is about my average.

Short films continue to be my bane, missing on all three. In my defense, these are notoriously hard to predict as they're usually not screened for general audiences, and there's little buzz about them in the run-up to the Oscars. There's also no preliminarily awards (SAG, Golden Globes) with short film categories to make it easier. As opposed to, say, the Director's Guild Award, which almost always predicts the Oscar winner.

As often seems to be the case, I had the luck of having my preferred film win in a category in which I predicted another movie to win. Thus I was very pleased to have my favorite of 2018, "Blade Runner 2049," walk away with two wins for Visual Effects and Cinematography. Roger Deakins, arguably the greatest living D.P., finally got an Oscar after 14 tries. And it wasn't just a "it's his turn" gimme: no other film approached the visual splendor of "Blade Runner 2049."

There were a handful of head-scratchers, though. I thought "The Silent Child" the weakest of the live-action shorts (thought it was still good). Similarly, I felt "Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405" to be the least deserving of the documentary shorts. "Remember Me" is a rather forgettable Best Song standard bearer. I still contend "Icarus" is a rather disjointed documentary.

As far as the speeches go, there were some good ones and some OK ones. No instant classics like Matthew McConaughey's stem-winder a while back, though Frances McDormand came closest. She was brave and angry and true and genuine. And she got millions of people to Google "inclusion rider," only to find very little available online. I bet there's a lot more information out there today.

In terms of the politics, I actually thought most of the ceremony hit a nice balance between indignation, humor and righteousness. Nothing too egregious. About the only bit I didn't care for was Emma Stone introducing the director nominees as "four women and Greta Gerwig," because that's deliberately denigrating four artists at the expense of another one. And that's with Gergwig as my preferred pick to win that category.

Speaking of which, I am disappointed that "Lady Bird," my #2 film of the year, got blanked on wins, though I wasn't surprised by it. I thought Gerwig had a shot at Original Screenplay, but the cultural impact of "Get Out" was bound to prevail. The one that truly hurts is Laurie Metcalf losing Supporting Actress to Allison Janney. Janney was fine in a broadly written comedic relief role. But Metcalf really got down in to the bones of her character.

A lot of people seem to favor Jimmy Kimmel as host, but I'm rather indifferent. I'd like him more of he stuck to zingers and stopped trying to do comedic set-pieces, like the theater visit or the jet ski giveaway. My take on emceeing is you're there to facilitate the ceremony, not try to recreate a version of your own thing on somebody else's dime. Personally, I'd give the job to Billy Crystal until they have to roll him out on a stretcher.

It'll be interesting to see how "The Shape of Water" holds up as a Best Picture winner. I adored it, but it's a very atypical pick for an Academy that tends to look stiff, serious historical pieces, with something like "The King's Speech" having the classic Oscar pedigree.

"Shape" is difficult to even pigeonhole -- is it a horror film? Fantasy? Romance? Comedy? Musical? Historical parable? A bit of all of them, I'd say, on top of being a magnificent exploration of not one but six or seven characters. The love for Guillermo Del Toro was palpable in that room, and I think it's genuine respect for an artist who makes movies unlike anybody else's.

(Well, let's see how that plagiarism lawsuit turns out...)

Review: "The Boss Baby"

Sometimes you just gotta take one for the team. That applies to sports, the business world and especially to parenting. Everyone who’s raised a wee one knows that the bulk of their childhood is spent doing the things they like rather than what you like.

Case in point: “The Boss Baby.” It’s an utterly unsurprising animated flick about a baby who wears a business suit, carries a briefcase and likes to order his family around. Alec Baldwin provides the voice, doing that gravelly/authoritarian thing straight from “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Cute little babies talking with men’s voices is one of the oldest gags around, harkening back to the first days they married cartoons to sound.

It’s “Look Who’s Talking” meets “Spy Kids” meets… every baby movie ever made.

But you know what? My kids adored it. Had been begging for weeks to see it. Screamed with laughter while watching it. Chattered about it endlessly afterword. Have already asked me when the sequel is coming out.

It’s from the animation studio of DreamWorks, the same folks behind the “Madagascar” and “Megamind” movies, and is directed by the same guy who made those, Tom McGrath. It’s based on the book by Marla Frazee, with a screenplay adaptation by Michael McCullers.

You know what’s coming: wiseacre shtick, lots of jokes about heinies and what comes out of them, cute critters, familial bonding, a few slightly scary bad guys, etc.

The metaphysics of the movie are… odd.

It supposes that all infant humans are the product of Baby Corp, which spits them out in a factory-like turnstile for delivery to their families via taxi cab. But every so often a baby comes out that’s decidedly un-babylike… as determined by failing to laugh at being tickled. These are designated as “boss” babies who are relegated to a lifetime in middle management running the company.

“The” Boss Baby is assigned to the Templeton family on a secret mission. It seems that there is only so much love in the world to go around, and lately puppies have been hogging up more than their share. Baby Corp suspects that Francis E. Francis (Steve Buscemi), the CEO of rival Puppy Corp, has something up his sleeve.

Ted and Janice Templeton (surprisingly bland Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow) are flunkies in the Puppy Corp marketing department, so Boss Baby is assigned to them. This sets off immediate conflict with 7-year-old Tim Templeton (Miles Christopher Bakshi), the hyper-imaginative scion of the clan. Strangely, mom and dad unquestioningly accept their newborn wearing a business suit, but only Tim thinks something is amiss and catches Boss Baby talking.

You can guess where things go, with the would-be siblings migrating from face-off to partnering up, infiltrating Puppy Corp, and deciding having a brother really isn’t so bad.

I was pretty well bored the entire time, though there’s a decent bit of physical comedy or two. But when spaghetti noodles come flying out of Boss Baby’s nose, my kids yukked so hard they knocked the popcorn over.

I regret that “The Boss Baby” isn’t better at appealing to a broader age spectrum. But if your kids are south of age 10, you need to punch that mom or dad clock and put in your time.

Is it too soon the predict the 2018 Oscars?

OK, that's a wrap on the 2017 Oscar ceremony! So it too early to start looking ahead to the 2018 Academy Awards?

Not if you're as obsessed with film awards as we are!

Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" is an early contender for Best Picture and a bunch of other awards, at least according to a list compiled by the Internet Movie Database and industry chatter. "Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow is also on tap with a drama about civil unrest in 1967 Detroit; as of yet that project is still untitled.

Although they've also got Matt Damon's egregious medieval thriller, "The Great Wall," on the list. What's that all about?

And while we're talking about movies, let's not ignore the Oscar ceremony itself. Jimmy Kimmel just completed his first stint as host, so does he have a chance to repeat? Here's one perspective trying to predict who the 2018 host will be.

Other notable films I'm hearing talked up for next year's awards include "Murder on the Orient Express," "Darkest Hour," the remake of "Blade Runner," "The Beguiled," "Downsizing" and "The Death of Stalin."

Check out these trailers for some early hopefuls!

Review: "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold"

"The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" is a documentary along the lines of director/co-writer/star Morgan Spurlock's breakout hit, "Super Size Me." It's a gimmick, but a pretty clever one.

Instead of gorging on McDonald's food and discovering that it makes you fat, Spurlock jumps headlong into the world of product placement in movies, television and so on. He doesn't do so in the most obvious way, by showing some of the most egregious examples and allowing us to laugh at the clumsy, naked crassness of it all (although there is a little of that, like the toadying employee offering his boss a Subway chicken teriyaki foot-long).

No, Spurlock -- whose filmmaking sensibilities run more to the arm-twisting of Michael Moore crossed with the look-at-me showmanship of a P.T. Barnum -- wants to illustrate the evils of marketing by loading his movie up with advertising messages and product placements.

The entire film is, in fact, about its own making. Spurlock goes around to advertising agencies and corporate headquarters to pitch them to sign on as a sponsor of the documentary he's shooting about product placement. For instance, he tells POM Wonderful (a pomegranate juice maker) that if they sign on as the signature sponsor for a cool million bucks, he'll never been seen drinking anything else in the movie. And he's true to his word.

(Thus, for technical and contractual reasons, the film's actual title is "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.")

Other sponsors, willing to risk Spurlock's reputation as a rabble-rouser -- albeit a smiling, apple-cheeked one -- come onboard. There are even actual 30-second commercials woven into the film starring Spurlock schlepping for companies like JetBlue, Old Navy and the Hyatt hotel chain.

In essence, he's selling out to find out what it's like to be a sellout.

There aren't really any profound truths or surprising insights to be found along this journey. By allowing the audience to tag along into the pitch meetings and listen in on the phone calls, we learn that most companies are fanatical about protecting their brand names, and that there are a whole lot of kooky and egotistical people involved in the marketing of these products.

But like "Super Size Me," it's an undeniably entertaining ride, with Spurlock as our engaging, impish host who brings a giddy enthusiasm to his merrymaking-slash-pranksterism.

The movie is less interesting in the (perhaps inevitable) sections where Spurlock questions himself and his project, and whether he's just becoming part of the problem he was trying to lampoon, and asks celebrities like Donald Trump to weigh in.

It's just an unnecessary downbeat to include things like professional scold Ralph Nader telling us how advertising is basically just professional-grade lying. But then, Spurlock punctures the sour mood by trying to hock a pair of shoes to Nader, who obliges.

Ultimately, the thing Spurlock sells best in "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" is himself.

3 stars out of four