We have delved into the genre of family friendly films but it's been a little while since Theodore Rex and even longer since Undercover Blues. I think in those few family-free months we had forgotten how utterly insufferable family films can be. They are the essence of the idea that a compromise leaves everyone unhappy. Who really is the demographic for a film like this? Babies, while apparently psychologically intrigued by seeing their own faces, have no need for a plot. Children are often looking towards teen or adult figures who have more freedom and opportunity for adventure (which is why many people see Star Wars for the first time when they are 6-8 years old). Teens are well beyond caring about anything like this. Similar to teens, childless adults can only be unnerved by the uncanny valley babies talking, annoyed by the childish hijinks, and unfocused because there are no jokes or plot complexity to appeal to someone whose age is in the double digits. Adults with kids only really care about the cuteness of their own kids and not some random other babies. This live action cartoon movie is for no one.In the world of the movie, baby babble is actually a fully developed language and some babies are actually geniuses who have complex conversations in this language, in spite of all lingustic logic which indicates that baby babble is the first stage of developing a real language. Instead of doing something fairly easy and not aesthetically strange like subtitling real babies speaking, they decided to dub the babies in English with creepy CGI lip movements. Knowing this bit of body horror, does the plot really matter? Well, a legendary figure known as the Big Kahuna, who is a 70-year-old genetically superior guy stuck with the body and interests of an eight-year-old, comes to town to try to stop a television executive (I think) who is manipulating people through a children's program. I can't really be more specific than that because everything that happens is just nonsense. Jon Voight is a Nazi with a terrible German accent. Scott Baio apparently got a paycheck. Big Kahuna lives in a Willy Wonka room that's made of toys instead of candy. He also floats and backflips a lot. An orphaned teen boy works for him and has a romance with the teen babysitter. The babies are not actually babies but two year olds who somehow haven't learn to speak yet. They also get transformed into superheroes at random times. Things happen and it's awful. At the end the teen boy's mom came back and somehow all of us expect Sarah missed the point that he was orphaned so we woke her up to explain how this was a conclusion to a dangling plot point.
I recommend this movie to people who really like to suffer and not in the glamorous existential way.
Quotes:
"I am too many and two powerful."
[on inspection of Big Kahuna's room]
"A little candy cane for my tastes but then I'm an adult."
Baby Bottle Rating: 2
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