Stop Throwing your Toys out the Pram (Baby Geniuses (DVD))

Member Name: The Polar One

Product:	Baby Geniuses (DVD)
Date:	10/07/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The babies talking and acting works well

Disadvantages: Weak jokes, too many dull scenes

67. Baby Geniuses (1999)
[film only review]

There has been a great deal of hatred thrown at this movie. People claiming it the worst ever made, and ready to divorce their wife for renting it. In contrast to my last review I was expecting this to be a truly awful experience, especially as someone who has yet to find babies cute. So I was as surprised as anyone that Baby Geniuses isn't all that bad. I can't see what all the fuss is about. In many ways it's just another middle of the road, goofy and unoriginal family film. Although by virtue of it's bizarre subject matter alone it was more engaging than many of it's contemporaries.

Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner) is the CEO of BabyCo, the biggest producer of baby products in the world. Working with Dr Heep (Christopher Lloyd) they have a theory that baby talk is actually a language that can be decoded. Also that babies have within them a gene containing knowledge and secrets of the human race passed down through generations. They are in fact geniuses, but lose the ability to tap that gene when they grow older. Kinder conducts illegal experiments on a group of babies in confinement, harnessing their abilities through the 'Kinder Method'. One baby is called Sly, who was separated from his twin Wit at birth. Wit was adopted by Robin (Kim Cattrall), whose husband (Peter MacNicol) is also studying to understand baby talk. When Sly escapes from the lab everything gets turned upside down.

From the get-go Baby Geniuses lays it's cards on the table. An escapee baby is chased down by SAS style armed guards. The baby uses it's martial arts skills to kick one adult in his most delicate place, then being captured and marched back to 'the secret lab'. The mood is of total fantasy and comic book villains, aimed squarely at an undemanding audience of course including young kids. The direction is simple, in part because of having to manage a large cast of kids and some special effects, but still effective. Unexpectedly coming the experienced hand of Bob Clark, director of Porky's and Black Christmas.

The babies themselves look a little older and larger than they are supposed to be; a necessary compromise. Using computer effects their mouths and expressions move to fit the English voice-overs, so we can understand what they are saying to each other. The lip syncing doesn't always look right, and a lot of the time it is avoided all together by focusing the camera on other things. Despite that it flowed naturally enough for me. There are some poor effects in places, particularly when superimposing faces on older actors doing stunts. On the whole I think they did a decent job, which couldn't have been easy to achieve.

Where the film suffers is throughout the script. The story is understandably simple, but I can't imagine the target audience being much older than seven or eight. In which case there is an awful lot of fairly dull dialogue to sit through. There is some slapstick, a large dose of toilet humour, and the babies spend a lot of time making fun of the adults with slang filled retorts. However, none of it's terribly funny or active. There are a number of references to older movies which only the parents are likely to get. For such an odd story there's not a great deal of imagination. Things don't really pick up until the climatic showdown in the last twenty minutes.

There's a lot of acting talent employed here, but very little actually making it to the screen. Kathleen Turner (The Virgin Suicides) gives the strongest performance, and Peter MacNicol (Numbers) is more animated than most. They are in tune with the over the top style of the film without being unbearable. Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) was sadly unmemorable except for his silly looking stick on beard. Whilst Kim Cattrall (Sex in the City) seemed to be on autopilot, and I'm not even sure what the point of having Dom DeLuise (Cannonball Run) as a handyman/babysitter was. Especially with a number of other extraneous characters for light relief only, leaving things feeling a bit cast heavy. The babies all did fine, voiced by what sounded like pre-teen children.

I was genuinely on the verge of giving this three stars, but there were a couple of misjudged gags, which I felt a little inappropriate and held it back. One such is where Sly changes disguises and asks a girl baby to take off her clothes. She responds "You could at least buy me dinner." And then later, "Call me, I'm listed". It adds to the garbled target audience, and I'm left wondering how many people would really enjoy it. I'm clearly too old now, but I know at age seven and older watching babies making wisecracks wouldn't be very cool or exciting. Whilst as a parent I'd be a little miffed with the sexual gag above. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned. I also wasn't keen about the over reliance on the phrase "diaper gravy", although I'm sure plenty of kids will find that funny.

Rated: UK:PG / USA:PG
Running Time: 97 mins

Trivia: On 2nd February 2009 Baby Geniuses charted at No.67 on the IMDB's bottom 100 films list. Scoring 2.2 out of 10, from 7,889 votes.

Summary: Not a disaster, but still a disappointment.