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  • 2019 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
      • For Sama
      • Jojo Rabbit
      • Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • Alita: Battle Angel
      • Blinded by the Light
      • Booksmart
      • John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
      • Joker
      • Knives Out
      • Midnight Traveler
      • Mike Wallace Is Here
      • Transit
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    • 3 Stars >
      • Ash is the Purest White
      • Avengers: Endgame
      • Brittany Runs A Marathon
      • Captain Marvel
      • The Dead Don't Die
      • Frozen II
      • Gloria Bell
      • Good Boys
      • The Hummingbird Project
      • The Kid Who Would Be King
      • Knock Down the House
      • Meeting Gorbachev
      • Queen & Slim
      • Ready or Not
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      • Us
      • Velvet Buzzsaw
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      • All Is True
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      • How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
      • Hustlers
      • It Chapter Two
      • The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
      • The Lion King
      • Long Day's Journey Into Night
      • Non-Fiction
      • Official Secrets
      • The Peanut Butter Falcon
      • Richard Jewell
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      • Where's My Roy Cohn?
      • Wonder Park
      • Yesterday
    • 2 Stars >
      • The Art of Racing in the Rain
      • Dark Phoenix
      • Dora and the Lost City of Gold
      • Frankie
      • Glass
      • Isn't It Romantic
      • Midway
      • Red Joan
      • Spider-Man: Far From Home
      • What Men Want
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • The Aeronauts
      • Angel Has Fallen
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      • The Goldfinch
      • The Kitchen
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      • Serenity
      • Terminator: Dark Fate
    • 1 Star >
      • Men in Black: International
      • Miss Bala
      • Stuber
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      • Happy Death Day 2U
  • Cinema Clash Podcast
  • 2018 Films
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      • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
      • Burning
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      • Isle of Dogs
      • The King
      • Roma
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      • Hostiles
      • The Insult
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      • Skate Kitchen
      • Sorry to Bother You
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      • Vox Lux
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      • Annihilation
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      • Eating Animals
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      • Mission: Impossible - Fallout
      • Paddington 2
      • The Price of Everything
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      • Support the Girls
      • Venom
    • 2.5 Stars >
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      • Creed II
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      • Mile 22
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      • The Party
      • Peter Rabbit
      • Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
      • Sicario: Day of the Soldado
      • A Simple Favor
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      • Wildlife
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      • Ant-Man and the Wasp
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      • The Equalizer 2
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      • The Meg
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      • A Wrinkle in Time
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    • 1 Star >
      • Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
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      • Born Guilty
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  • 2017 Films
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    • 2.5 Stars >
      • Battle of the Sexes
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      • Beauty and the Beast
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      • Leap!
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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      • The Dinner
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      • Fifty Shades Darker
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    • 1 Star >
      • Rings
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      • xXx: Return of Xander Cage
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      • Buster's Mal Heart
  • 2016 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Captain Fantastic
      • Hell or High Water
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      • Jackie
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      • La La Land
      • A Monster Calls
      • Paterson
      • Silence
    • 3.5 Stars >
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      • Cameraperson
      • Deadpool
      • Embrace of the Serpent
      • Finding Dory
      • Hail, Caesar!
      • Miss Sloane
      • Moonlight
      • Nocturnal Animals
      • Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    • 3 Stars >
      • Allied
      • Arrival
      • Author: The JT LeRoy Story
      • The Birth of a Nation
      • The Conjuring 2
      • Creative Control
      • Doctor Strange
      • The Eagle Huntress
      • The Edge of Seventeen
      • Eye in the Sky
      • The First Monday in May
      • Green Room
      • Hacksaw Ridge
      • Ixcanul
      • The Jungle Book
      • Keanu
      • Live by Night
      • Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
      • The Magnificent Seven
      • Miles Ahead
      • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
      • A Monster with a Thousand Heads
      • The Nice Guys
      • Passengers
      • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
      • Star Trek Beyond
      • Sully
      • War Dogs
      • Wiener-Dog
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • Café Society
      • Captain America: Civil War
      • Christine
      • The Clan
      • Deepwater Horizon
      • Eddie the Eagle
      • Equals
      • The Girl on the Train
      • High-Rise
      • The Infiltrator
      • Knight of Cups
      • Kubo and the Two Strings
      • Lion
      • Little Men
      • London Has Fallen
      • Louder Than Bombs
      • Morris from America
      • Pete's Dragon
      • Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
      • Queen of Katwe
      • Race
      • Southside With You
      • Storks
      • Sunset Song
      • Trolls
      • Warcraft
      • Zootopia
    • 2 Stars >
      • Alice Through the Looking Glass
      • American Pastoral
      • Bad Moms
      • The BFG
      • Blair Witch
      • The Choice
      • Dough
      • Everybody Wants Some!!
      • The Finest Hours
      • The Legend of Tarzan
      • The Light Between Oceans
      • The Secret Life of Pets
      • Suicide Squad
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • The 5th Wave
      • Allegiant
      • Angry Birds
      • Bad Santa 2
      • The Boss
      • Central Intelligence
      • Ghostbusters
      • How to Be Single
      • The Huntsman: Winter's War
      • Ip Man 3
      • Zoolander 2
    • 1 Star >
      • Gods of Egypt
      • Ice Age: Collision Course
      • My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
      • Now You See Me 2
      • Ratchet & Clank
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Ben-Hur
      • Norm of the North
      • Ride Along 2
  • 2015 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • The Big Short
      • Ex Machina
      • Jafar Panahi's Taxi
      • Steve Jobs
      • The Tribe
      • While We're Young
      • Youth
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • Best of Enemies
      • Bridge of Spies
      • Brooklyn
      • Clouds of Sils Maria
      • Concussion
      • The End of the Tour
      • The Hateful Eight
      • Inside Out
      • It Follows
      • Mad Max: Fury Road
      • The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
      • The Martian
      • Mistress America
      • The Revenant
      • Room
      • Shaun the Sheep Movie
      • Sisters
      • Spotlight
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      • Truth
    • 3 Stars >
      • The Age of Adaline
      • Avengers: Age of Ultron
      • Black Mass
      • Carol
      • The Cut
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      • Fresh Dressed
      • The Good Dinosaur
      • Grandma
      • James White
      • Janis: Little Girl Blue
      • Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
      • McFarland, USA
      • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
      • Merchants of Doubt
      • MERU
      • Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
      • Mustang
      • Pan
      • The Peanuts Movie
      • Pitch Perfect 2
      • Pixels
      • San Andreas
      • The Second Mother
      • Son of Saul
      • Spectre
      • Trainwreck
      • We Are Your Friends
      • Woman in Gold
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • American Ultra
      • Anomalisa
      • Ant-Man
      • The Assassin
      • The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
      • Boulevard
      • Crimson Peak
      • The Danish Girl
      • Far from the Madding Crowd
      • Finders Keepers
      • Furious 7
      • The Gunman
      • Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
      • In the Heart of the Sea
      • Jurassic World
      • Kingsman: The Secret Service
      • Listen to Me Marlon
      • Macbeth
      • The New Rijksmuseum
      • No Escape
      • Spy
      • The Visit
      • A Walk in the Woods
      • The Water Diviner
      • The Wolfpack
    • 2 Stars >
      • The 33
      • Aloft
      • Black Sea
      • Do I Sound Gay?
      • Fifty Shades of Grey
      • Focus
      • Freeheld
      • Get Hard
      • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
      • Joy
      • Minions
      • Mississippi Grind
      • The Night Before
      • The Salvation
      • The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
      • Seventh Son
      • Terminator Genisys
      • Tomorrowland
      • True Story
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Chappie
      • Desert Dancer
      • Hot Tub Time Machine 2
      • The Divergent Series: Insurgent
      • Jupiter Ascending
      • Maggie
      • Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
      • Run All Night
      • Ted 2
      • Vacation
    • 1 Star >
      • The Lazarus Effect
      • Magic Mike XXL
      • The Transporter Refueled
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • The Gallows
  • 2014 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Calvary
      • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
      • Inherent Vice
      • The LEGO Movie
      • Life Itself
      • A Most Violent Year
      • Mr. Turner
      • The Theory of Everything
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • American Sniper
      • Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
      • The Boxtrolls
      • Boyhood
      • The Equalizer
      • Fury
      • Gone Girl
      • Guardians of the Galaxy
      • The Imitation Game
      • Like Father, Like Son
      • Mommy
      • Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
      • Particle Fever
      • Selma
      • Top Five
      • Whiplash
    • 3 Stars >
      • 22 Jump Street
      • Alive Inside
      • Beside Still Waters
      • The Book of Life
      • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
      • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: THEM
      • Draft Day
      • Edge of Tomorrow
      • Get on Up
      • Godzilla
      • The Grand Budapest Hotel
      • The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
      • I Am Ali
      • The Judge
      • Kill the Messenger
      • Locke
      • Love Is Strange
      • Nas: Time Is Illmatic
      • Night Moves
      • The November Man
      • The One I Love
      • The Overnighters
      • The Raid 2
      • Rosewater
      • Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
      • St. Vincent
      • Still Alice
      • Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
      • Two Days, One Night
      • Unbroken
      • Under the Skin
      • Wild
      • X-Men: Days of Future Past
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • 3 Days to Kill
      • About Last Night
      • Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
      • Art and Craft
      • As Above, So Below
      • Begin Again
      • Blood Ties
      • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
      • Divergent
      • The Expendables 3
      • Fading Gigolo
      • Foxcatcher
      • The Giver
      • The Grand Seduction
      • Horns
      • Horrible Bosses 2
      • The Hundred-Foot Journey
      • Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
      • Jersey Boys
      • Listen Up Philip
      • Magic in the Moonlight
      • The Maze Runner
      • Men, Women & Children
      • A Million Ways to Die in the West
      • The Monuments Men
      • Mr. Peabody & Sherman
      • Muppets Most Wanted
      • Need for Speed
      • Non-Stop
      • Point and Shoot
      • RoboCop
      • Tracks
      • Transcendence
      • Veronica Mars
      • Winter's Tale
    • 2 Stars >
      • 300: Rise of an Empire
      • Alan Partridge
      • The Amazing Spider-Man 2
      • The Art of the Steal
      • Big Hero 6
      • Blended
      • Exodus: Gods and Kings
      • The French Minister
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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      • The Fault in Our Stars
      • I, Frankenstein
      • Pompeii
      • Transformers: Age of Extinction
    • 1 Star >
      • Brick Mansions
      • The Identical
      • Ride Along
      • Son of God
      • Tusk
      • Vampire Academy
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Left Behind
      • The Legend of Hercules
      • Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
    • Zero Stars >
      • A Haunted House 2
  • 2013 Films
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      • Frances Ha
      • The Gatekeepers
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      • We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks
    • 3.5 Stars >
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      • August: Osage County
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      • Captain Phillips
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      • God Loves Uganda
      • The Great Beauty
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    • 3 Stars >
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      • American Hustle
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      • Dead Man Down
      • Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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      • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
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    • 1 Star >
      • The Hangover Part III
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    • 3 Stars >
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    • 2 Stars >
      • The Deep Blue Sea
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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    • 1 Star >
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  • 2011 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Another Earth
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      • Page One: Inside the New York Times
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    • 2.5 Stars >
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      • Crazy, Stupid, Love
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    • 2 Stars >
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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      • One Day
      • Priest
      • Restless
    • 1 Star >
      • The Three Musketeers
      • Toast
      • Transformers: Dark of the Moon
  • Misc...
    • 2019 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2019 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2018 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2017 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2016 Middleburg Film Festival
  • Review Index
  • About Me

The Boss Baby

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Directed by: Tom McGrath
Written by: Michael McCullers - Based on the book by Marla Frazee
Voices by: Alec Baldwin, Miles Bakshi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kurdow, Steve Buscemi, Tobey Maguire, James McGrath, Conrad Vernon, ViviAnn Yee, Eric Bell Jr., David Soren
Animation/Comedy/Family - 97 min          Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 28 Mar 2017


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In 2016, Storks taught audiences babies come from a magic machine and are then delivered by storks air mail.  That is until the storks transitioned to a new business model, think Amazon rather than Buy Buy Baby.  In The Boss Baby, babies are once again formed assembly line style from a magic machine but rather than complicate transportation with avian middle-men, the babies arrive at your front door via taxi.  The entity behind the magic machine, determining which babies are suitable for families and which to vector toward the executive track, and above all, monitoring baby love market share is Baby Corp; a massive cubical farm led by only a select few baby CEOs.

The split between the Baby Corp rank and file and the brass also bisects how The Boss Baby’s audience will perceive the film.  For every fart joke, food projectile, and utterance of a phrase like “poop dooty”, there is an equal and opposite adult joke referring to Glengarry Glen Ross, prison shivs, and Elvis.  I do not believe there is a time where parents and their children will laugh at the same joke; my son and I certainly didn’t.  When Boss Baby (Alec Baldwin, Concussion) farts and a puff of baby powder ejects from his butt, my son about lost his mind.  When Tim (Miles Bakshi), Boss Baby’s older brother, is shackled to a metaphorical prison wall and his Gandalf-like alarm clock wishes for his magical shank, I laughed just as hard to the puzzlement of the kid.

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It is not careful family planning and kismet why Boss Baby shows up on the family’s doorstep much to 7 year-old Tim’s jealous chagrin.  It’s a business maneuver.  Boss Baby is on official Baby Corp business to thwart the ascendence of puppy love at the expense of baby love.  Tim’s parents (Lisa Kudrow (The Girl on the Train) and Jimmy Kimmel) are executives at Puppy Corp and Boss Baby has limited time to discover Puppy Corp’s new product sure to saturate the love market and sabotage it.  After the rocky start between the brothers with Tim severely put out about the lack of attention shown to him now that there is a new baby in the house, the two decide to pool their talents so Boss Baby can move on at the end of a successful espionage mission.

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Director Tom McGrath, a veteran of the first three Madagascar films, saves the plot mechanics of Boss Baby attempting to infiltrate and dismantle the puppy operation for the climax.  Most of The Boss Baby is the feud between Tim and the baby and their back-and-forth, tit-for-tat shenanigans.  The inevitable sub-plot of the two becoming more than allies and actually brothers simmers beneath the surface until the requisite feelings show up later hovers around the edges as does Boss Baby’s peculiar physical nature.  Boss Baby takes Tim on a Baby Corp tour which ends up disconcerting both Tim and the audience when they realize remaining an infant is Boss Baby’s long-term goal and skipping over that whole childhood and growing up metamorphosis thing. ​

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Even though the premise sounds off-putting, The Boss Baby really does land its jokes, a credit to writer Michael McCullers whose time on Saturday Night Live's writing staff and authorship of two Austin Powers films is evident.  The kids will rejoice at the thought of a baby leader pulling the wool over all the adults’ eyes and I appreciated the detail in the Raiders of the Lost Ark homage and have been quoting the Elvis sequence all week at work.  Naturally, when one has to get to Las Vegas quickly, there is always an aircraft full of Elvis impersonators ready to take-off from the local airport.  The older siblings in the audience may identify with the “My life was perfect until you showed up” point of view; I don’t know, I was the youngest child in my family.  But I see where Tim is coming from; his parents really don’t do the most effective job balancing the needs of their two kids.  The storks never had that problem; they just delivered the packages.   

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