Animated film has too many plot holes to count

Ella Andersen, Online Editor
Originally published March 29, 2018

Alec Baldwin, Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy Kimmel and Tobey Maguire, what could go wrong? Apparently, just about everything. “Boss Baby” was an animated film that released this past year. Against all odds, it even scored itself an Oscars nomination for Best Animated Feature. Unsurprisingly, it did not win. And here is why.

The movie opens with a very happy young boy. He loves his parents very dearly, and their family is content. One day, the parents tell the boy that he will soon have a baby brother. Now this is where it quickly and unstoppingly goes downhill.

The mother is pregnant, obviously, as that is how babies are made – or is it? The movie shows a long clip of babies coming off conveyor belts and going into tubes and being sorted into either family babies (regular babies), or business babies (a small few). This whole sequence, while watching, I assumed was a dream that the main protagonist, Timmy, was having about his soon-to-be baby brother. The thing is, though, is that it’s not a dream at all.

So here the mom is, like nine months pregnant, and all of a sudden, the baby is dropped off. Yep, no birth. The mom is pregnant, and then the baby gets dropped off at the house in a black car and he’s wearing a SUIT. That makes no sense. And this is all within the first few minutes of the movie.

The parents also don’t find it odd that the baby can feed himself and wears a suit. Not odd at all.

I believe the original appeal of the movie was having Alec Baldwin as a baby – that’s hilarious! But not quite.

It’s hard for me to even find good intentions in this movie. There are movies that you watch because they’re bad, because it’s funny, but this isn’t even that. The plot makes no logical sense, so the majority of the movie is spent questioning what just happened.

Amid all the amazing movies that came out this past year, “Boss Baby” should be put in a dark corner, and left alone. On the contrary, though, it gets an Oscar nomination.

Getting a low Rotten Tomatoes score of 52 percent (which seems generous to me) doesn’t place it anywhere near the Oscar winner, “Coco”, which scored an astounding 95 percent.

The fact that a movie with a plot thinner than paper got the recognition of the Academy is ridiculous, and puts awards show nominations into question. “Boss Baby” was a feeble attempt at a heart-warming family movie, and makes me wonder if DreamWorks is running out of ideas.