Here Are The Answers To Every Question You Have About ‘The Boss Baby’
You know, so you don't actually have to see 'The Boss Baby'.
If you had to guess the biggest film in the US right now, what would it be? Probably Beauty and the Beast, right? It’s a much-hyped remake of a 1991 Disney classic; between millennial nostalgia, star power, and general family crowd-pleasing, it hits all the demos. But you’d be wrong.
The most popular film at the US box office is not a blockbuster or big franchise flick (seeya Kong: Skull Island and Logan) or a rebooted property (Power Rangers, Smurfs, and the misguided Ghost in the Shell). It’s not a critically-lauded original thriller about race (though Get Out had its time). The biggest film in the US, as of this moment, is The Boss Baby: a film that is somehow exactly what it sounds like and nothing that a reasonable person should ever imagine.
The Boss Baby is the surreal, nightmarish creation of someone who has recently come off a high dose of hospital-grade painkillers. It is a film which sucks you, willing or otherwise, into a world of nefarious Kewpie Dolls, and stamps their smiling faces into the dark corners of your mind to last weeks after seeing it.
This is a film which raises many, many questions — questions which I will answer for you! But, for any discussion of this film to take place, you must first accept one piece of paramount logic: The Boss Baby makes total sense. You see, Boss Baby is a baby who is also a boss — and that is where both the genius and the comedy lay.
What do you mean the baby is a boss?
It’s very simple. Boss Baby (this is his name) is a member of middle management at Baby Corp (the company where babies come from, which is run by babies drinking magic formula to stay young forever). Boss Baby is sent to the home of Tobey Maguire (a seven-year-old dweeb named Tim), Jimmy Kimmel (a clueless dad) and Lisa Kudrow (a clueless mum) on a super secret Baby Corp mission concerning the amount of love in the world and also puppies. Baby Corp is a capitalist enterprise, but seems to deal in love instead of US dollars as currency. Although sometimes Boss Baby does throw around cash also. Anyway.
You can tell that Boss Baby is a boss because he wears a tiny Boss Baby suit, he talks about wanting to eat sushi, he does not respond to being tickled (in the Baby Corp world this is a biological necessity for becoming a boss), and he is voiced by Alec Baldwin. Boss Baby is essentially Jack Donaghy — but he is also a baby. And the baby-ness is just as important to all this as the boss-ness.
Don’t the parents know the baby is actually a boss?
Aren’t ALL babies the boss? You see, this is the subtle art of The Boss Baby. While Boss Baby is a boss at Baby Corp, he is also the boss of his interim household. Boss Baby has his fake parents working so hard they don’t get any sleep! Boss Baby is a picky eater and requires constant attention! The Boss Baby likes to flex his power over his subordinates.
Boss Baby is, as they say in the trade, an arsehole.
Boss Baby’s parents — like real-life parents! — are not privvy to their infant’s true feelings and motives. In Boss Baby’s case, this is problematic as he’s holding secret meetings with his baby colleagues planning to sabotage a pet convention in Las Vegas, ensuring a new type of puppy is erased from the Earth, before obliviating his parents’ memories and returning for a promotion at Baby Corp. But the point stands: it sure can feel like babies are the bosses!!
What is The Boss Baby conveying about the capitalist means of production?
Great question. The crux of the film is Boss Baby’s ultimate unhappiness. (Spoilers for The Boss Baby!) Boss Baby is successful and respected and even manages to win the respect of his interim brother Tobey Maguire. Once he completes his set mission, he returns to great fanfare at Baby Corp including a new corner office with a golden potty. But even then, something is missing. Boss Baby… has learned to love.
But he is a boss!!
There are some big issues at play in this movie. If all babies come from Baby Corp, all human life on this Earth is determined by a bunch of seemingly unfeeling, capitalistic stunted beings with names like Big Boss Baby and Super Colossal Big Fat Boss Baby. Also, everyone in this company is being literally bottle-fed formula that promises them eternal youth but bars them from ever experiencing any meaningful aspects of life. These sure are metaphors for somethin’!
But this is a children’s movie, so Boss Baby keeps it PG: he must simply choose between a life with his new family (unconditional love, imagination games where you get to be a pirate), or a life at Baby Corp (mindless aphorisms and empty corporate approval for all eternity). There are no in-betweens, the machine is evil, it is an entirely seperate issue that this movie has raked in hundreds of millions at the box office, the revolution starts at dawn. Sleep well kids!
Is the baby Donald Trump?
Look. Everyone who worked on this movie will tell you no. But they also released a movie in 2017 in which a baby in a suit, played by the world’s top Trump impersonator, tells people “you’re fired” and at one point uses a toy in the shape of a Mexican man as a stress ball. So, you know, fake news etc.
Why is everyone seeing The Boss Baby?
The Boss Baby knows how to cater to demographics. For the kids, there are long scenes of imaginative roleplay about pirates and ninjas, as well as gags about farting. (A scene in which Boss Baby farts talcum powder out of his naked butt would have earned the film an Oscar if the Academy was comprised of my theatre of six year olds). The parents, on the other hand, get to argue about Trump allusions and feel good about catching easter eggs about Glengarry Glen Ross.
For the rest of us… we get a movie called The Boss Baby. Though the film’s name comes straight from the book it was adapted from (a book which, by the by, doesn’t make any mention of Baby Corp or puppies or plots to steal back all the world’s supply of love), it definitely seems to be shooting for absurdity.
Maybe The Boss Baby is trying to stoke its own jokes — hate-watching movie-goers are still movie-goers all the same and pop culture that provokes ironic fascination certainly stands out in a crowded 2017 marketplace. Maybe The Boss Baby went and Young Pope‘d us. Maybe like Paolo Sorrentino’s rich and self-aware HBO drama, it will surprise even the harshest critic…
Should you go see The Boss Baby?
No. It is bad.
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Meg Watson is the editor of Junkee. She tweets at @msmegwatson.