The Boss Baby

Story: Tim gets a new baby brother who wears a suit, secretly talks over the phone and draws up evil plans in the dead of the night.

Review: Must animated movies border on the bizarre?

The Boss Baby will test your threshold for quirky stories. In the realm of animation, nothing is too unreal: talking cars? Sure. Lost fish? Let’s give it a sequel. Emotions with their own emotions? Worthy of an Oscar. Add to that a baby who is a cunning corporate official, talks in pie-charts and is working relentlessly towards ridding the world of… puppies. See, bizarre!

Tim (voiced by Miles Bakshi) watches in shock as his evil baby brother (voiced by Alec Baldwin) fools his parents (voiced by Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow) into believing that he’s the adorable new addition to the family, while slyly planning a coup against the pet company that they work for. Puppies, baby’s research shows, are taking over the world with their cuteness and making babies obsolete.

The film opens with a hilarious montage that shows where babies come from: a baby-manufacturing factory with assembly lines and everything. Most of them are assigned to a family, and some who aren’t cute enough are sent to work at this factory’s headquarters. All of this is prefaced by the fact that our protagonist Tim has a very vivid imagination. The whole movie could very well be an active fantasy of his. But whether it is real or not is left to the viewer.

The writing is mostly fresh, sometimes infused with dry wit and will tickle you. There is some physical comedy, a lot of toilet humour and (thankfully uncensored) baby bottoms. The story itself turns into quite a cliche with an evil villain (voiced by Steve Buscemi) and a little boy with a saviour complex. Towards the end, there is some blatant emotional manipulation, but it isn’t too bothersome.

This isn’t one of those films that are unnecessarily 3D; the animation is impressive and enhances the experience.

Give it a shot, the storytelling isn’t strong enough to make you weep like a baby, but it will occasionally make you giggle like one.