Boss Baby

The Boss Baby might have been a lot more fun if its makers had refused to let it grow up.

While many fine animated films have been made for grown-ups, this new offering from Tom McGrath (the brain behind Megamind and Madagascar) is at its most honest and entertaining when it is told from the perspective of 7-year-old Tim (voiced as a child by Miles Christopher Bakshi and as an adult by Tobey Maguire).

Tim's life is full of adventure, or at least that's how he sees it. Through his vivid imagination mundane situations take on epic proportions. He also enjoys the undivided attention of his parents (Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow), who happily sing him to sleep each night.

Tim feels oddly devastated after his mother develops a strange bulge in her abdomen. Before he can properly comprehend what's happening, he has a baby brother. Clad in a suit and slinging a briefcase, the infant can bring Mom and Dad to their knees with a loud cry.

Now his parents barely acknowledge him because the baby seems to be issuing orders. When Tim sees Baby alone or with other toddlers, he discovers that his little brother really can issue orders.

In fact, Baby can even speak as if he's delivering memos to staff members. When he opens his mouth to do something other than eat or drool, Baby speaks with Alec Baldwin's voice. The actor, now probably best known for his caricature of President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, essentially reprises his turn as the pitiless sales manager from Glengarry Glen Ross.

It turns out that Tim isn't imagining anything. Baby actually is a midlevel executive who's trying to make sure babies don't lose any affection to other cute stuff. He also drinks a special formula that helps him retain his diminutive size but enables him to talk and think like a grown-up.

Baby needs all of his skills because the CEO (Steve Buscemi) of Puppy Co. has a new product that may make grown-ups want something other than a miniature version of themselves. To stop the potential damage to the baby business, Baby is going to need his big brother's help.

From here, the movie loses a lot of its charm. Screenwriter Michael McCullers (working from Marla Frazee's book) sticks a little too close to the corporate line that many recent cartoons have taken.

There's lots of frenzied action, but the battle for parental love is of little consequence. After all, animals can bring families together. I saw the film in 2-D, but it's hard to imagine the garish Las Vegas setting looking any better with the glasses. Without them, the eye-gouging brightness is already pretty painful.

There is some formidable voice talent involved, but there really isn't much for them to do. The best thing that could be said for Baldwin's committed but uninspired turn is that he demonstrates what he would have sounded like in Glengarry Glen Ross without David Mamet's stylishly incessant profanity.

The Boss Baby is at its most enjoyable when viewers, like Tim himself, have to figure out what is real and what is make believe. If Alec Baldwin delivers a PowerPoint presentation of dull material, it's still dull.

MovieStyle on 03/31/2017