The Boss Baby (2017)
Directed by Tom McGrath
A story about how a new baby's arrival impacts a family, told from the point of view of a delightfully unreliable narrator, a wildly imaginative 7 year old named Tim.
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Of course, the concept of infants with not so infantile voices is nothing new (see: Stewie on Family Guy, the Look Who’s Talking movies), but in the capable hands of director Tom McGrath (co-director of the three Madagascar movies) and screenwriter Michael McCullers (Mike Myers’ collaborator on the second and third Austin Powers pictures), The Boss Baby has an agenda all its own.
Alas, the stroke of casting luck is one of the only notable aspects of director Tom McGrath (Madagascar and its two sequels) and screenwriter Michael McCullers’ (Mr. Peabody & Sherman) feature adaptation of Marla Frazee’s picture book.
The conceit makes perfect sense, and doesn’t sound all that complicated, but it still makes your head hurt, because the director, Tom McGrath (of the “Madagascar” films), working from a script by Michael McCullers, tries to use the it’s-all-in-Tim’s-mind premise to turn “The Boss Baby” into a variation on “Inside Out”: not just a daffy comic trifle about an authoritarian tot, but a timeless tale of the imagination, and of how kids use it to ease their heartache.
Fortunately, “Madagascar” director Tom McGrath has a bottomless well of visually clever ways to bounce between fantasy and reality.
Director Tom McGrath previously made all three of DreamWorks’ Madagascar movies (with Eric Darnell as co-director), but The Boss Baby doesn’t have as many laughs, or even as much heart, as those hit franchise outings.