The Boss Baby (2017) Review

Not since Disney/ Pixar’s “Cars” has an animated movie presented such an incoherent and illogical fictional world as “The Boss Baby” does.

Facing an existential threat, Baby Corp sends an undercover operative (Alec Baldwin) to live with the Templeton family to find out what the Templeton parents know about Puppy Co’s plan to launch a new breed of puppy. But when the Templeton’s son Timothy (Tobey Maguire) rumbles Boss Baby’s cover the two are forced to work together.

It’s hard to encapsulate the many, many ways that “The Boss Baby” just doesn’t make sense. Loosely adapted from a picture book, the final product screams of a concept handed to a writer’s room to make the best of. It’s a shame, too, as the vocal performance are pretty good, especially Alec Baldwin and the animation design is beautiful to look at. It’s just that nothing else makes a lick of sense. “Storks” struggled to reconcile its cutesy plot with the basics of where babies come from but “The Boss Baby” makes it look like a biology masterclass. Even if you can overlook the shakiness of the basic premise, the plot doesn’t work either and the film stumbles from one ‘hey, wouldn’t it be funny if…?’ set piece to the next, connected by the thinnest of coherent narrative threads long after the mild amusement of a ‘helpless’ baby spouting corporate buzzwords wears thin.

Instantly forgettable, Dreamworks needs to stop churning out this kind of rubbish and get on with making a follow-up to “How To Train Your Dragon 2”.

2/10