The Boss Baby review by Siraj Syed: These guys sure have bawls!

Cutie cutie. Coochie coochie. Cooey cooey. Too muchy muchy! Fun, funny. Listen, honey, it’s ‘Big brother’ v/s Baby brother. Baby Corp v/s Puppy Corp. It’s a gooey gooey, gagaey gagaey mess of gawpaw, but so adorable, aw. Aw-struck. Amazing animation. Hilarious declamation. A good outing for the vacation.

Calling all babies, baby brothers and sisters, parents, baby-sitters, corporate ladder-climbers, cartoon-lovers, and the children who never grew-up in all you others. Make a beeline. No, make that a babeeline, for the cinema that is showing the computer animation comedy. The Boss Baby. Carry a few diapers, if you are carrying babies below the age of five. They will enjoy the diaper capers too, butt only to your vulnerabilities. Not great cinema, but feel great cinema, for sure. You want more? Here you ore...are!

Dreamworks SKG works hard at your as cagey as stagey dreams, and converts many baby woes into assembly line rows...and rows, of babies and puppies, toys and boys, girls and hurls, with a million baby steps and an equal number animated leps...leaps. In 3D, if you pleasey! Two wheelers and four wheelers. Wheeler-dealers and greedy fellers!

Tim Templeton (Tobey Maguire as an adult and Miles Christopher Bakshi as a child) is an adventurous and imaginative seven-year old boy who lives with his parents, Ted (Jimmy Kimmel) and Janice (Lisa Kudrow), and wishes it to be just the three of them, forever. Ted asks him one day whether he would like to have a Baby brother, and that is where his nightmare begins. Soon afterwards, Tim is surprised when a business suit-wearing infant shows up at his house, carrying a brief-case, and Ted and Janice proudly call him Tim's little brother. Tim gets immensely jealous of the attention the baby receives, and he commands and demands a helluva lot.

Soon, Tim learns that the baby can talk like an adult (Alec Baldwin) and he introduces himself as 'The Boss'. Seeing an opportunity to be rid of him, Tim records a conversation between him and other toddlers on a cassette (really?), who are over at Tim's house for a ‘meeting’ (under the guise of a play-date by the parents), to do something about how dog puppies are receiving more love than babies. The Boss Baby and the other infants catch Tim with the recording, and after a chase, the tape is ‘terminated’. With no evidence to support him, Tim is subsequently grounded by his parents for his actions and misadventures, during the long chase between him and the infants.

The Boss Baby comes to Tim and forces him to suck on a pacifier, that transports them to Baby Corp, a place where infants with adult-like minds work to preserve infant love everywhere, but they are virtual, therefore not aware of the duo’s visit. The Boss Baby explains to Tim that he was sent on a mission to see why puppies are getting more love than infants, and he has infiltrated Tim's residence because his parents work for Puppy Co., whose CEO, Francis E. Francis (Steve Buscemi), is unleashing a new puppy soon, on the day that employees take their children to work. He is protected by the gargantuan Eugene (Conrad Vernon), Francis’s brother.

Based on 2010 picture-book, The Boss Baby, by Marla Frazee, the film has a screenplay written by Michael McCullers, of the Austin Powers fame. McCullers wrote and directed 2008’s baby Mama. That explains the James Bond (mainly weapons and title montages) and Austin Powers (Mini Me) take-offs that are an integral part of the film but might be lost on non-niche audiences, to their advantage. Some of the ‘explicit’ (digitally masked) baby nudity and the recurrent mages of potty and drool are overboard and needed better restraint. Dialogue relies on some pseudo punny humour, but whaddya expect? The lead actor is supposed to be six-and-a-half years old, his brother a virtual new-born (virtual as in VR).

Computer animation is first class (like the plane sequence in the film), and the colours ethereal, like in all those Madagascar films that Tom McGrath directed. He revels in both movement animation, character delineation as well as carefully crafted slo-mo and jerk-mo. Sadly, the plot dithers when it gets into the Corporate Wars and Marketing Pie domain (power-naps included), relying on cartoon slapstick to escape becoming a stick in the mud.

As is the norm, actors who dub the voices in such forays have the advantage of visuals t match their chords to, and a lot of time to get it right. He comes up with one ace—the Elvis Presley impersonating contest in Las Vegas---contrived to coincide with Puppy Corp’s public launch of the Cutest Puppy delivered via Blue...not Dart, rather Blue Sky-fall, but, chuckle-chuckle, what a whale of as time. Special appeal to those in the age-group 50-100.

Most of the 97 minutes disappear fast, like those cookies or popcorn or burgers or pizzas colas or coffee that you devour while you watch. Take a power nap in the seven that don’t, pacifiers firmly in your mouth. With two Big Macs, McCullers and McGrath, this bawling valley is nine-pins time more fun than any bowling alley.

Miles Christopher Bakshi as Tim Templeton

Tobey Maguire as the adult Tim, the narrator, who is barely seen at the end

Alec Baldwin as the Boss Baby Templeton

Steve Buscemi as Francis E. Francis (replacing the earlier announced Kevin Spacey)

Jimmy Kimmel as Ted Templeton

Lisa Kudrow as Janice Templeton

Conrad Vernon as Eugene Francis

James McGrath as Wizzie, the talking clock, and the Elvis Impersonator

Vivi Ann Yee as Staci/Stacey

Eric Bell Jr. as the Triplets

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tquIfapGVqs