Baby Geniuses

MPA Rating: PG-Rating (MPA)

for some rude behavior and dialog.

Reviewed by: Debbie Blanton
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating:	Average
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience:	Family
Genre:	Crime Comedy Family
Length:
Year of Release:	1999
USA Release:	March 12, 1999

Featuring	Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Cattrall, Peter MacNicol
Director	Bob Clark
Producer	Steven Paul Crystal Sky Worldwide
Distributor	TriStar Pictures, a division of Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment

All babies are born with the knowledge of the secrets of the universe and the ability to speak with each other. What adults hear as “baby talk” is actually sophisticated conversation. That’s the general idea behind this movie. Most people love babies… so why not have a movie that shows babies speaking actual words, dancing, and sounding like grown ups? “Baby Geniuses” could just as well have been called “Babies with a ’Tude.”

Dr. Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner) is the scheming, wildly ambitious boss at BABYCO, the world’s largest manufacturer of baby products. However, what the public does not know is that she also funds a secret research lab together with her partner in crime, Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd), devoted solely to cracking the baby code that she is convinced exists. When Sly, the best and brightest of these baby geniuses, escapes from the secret lab and finds himself in the outside world, Drs. Kinder and Heap must work quickly to recapture him before he blows the lid off of their secret forever. Sly organizes the babies in the outside world to invade the secret lab in order to free the baby geniuses and bring down Dr. Kinder’s evil empire once and for all.

Generally, I think everyone who likes babies will think this movie is cute, and all the kids that were in the theater when I saw it had a ball. There were a couple of uses of profanity, one of which came from Sly, the lead baby (which I really didn’t care to hear coming from a “baby”). There was a lot of cute special effects and computer generation; unfortunately, it didn’t appear to be “real” (but that is forgivable as we know that babies aren’t able to do half the stuff they did in the movie anyway—or can they?) There was a LOT of attitude coming from the babies throughout the entire movie. There were also a few other instances of rude behavior and dialogue.

If your looking for a few laughs “Baby Geniuses” is pretty entertaining. Children seem to enjoy this movie even more than many adults. I won’t be putting this on my “to buy” list when it is available on video. However, if you are looking for a good, fairly clean movie with a lot of attitude and cuteness then you’re in for an entertaining time.

I thought this movie looked cute from the previews—babies talking their “goo-goo” language, but they are really talking to each other, and the adults don’t know it. This movie I could definitely have not gone and seen, because it was a waste of my time. I was very offended to hear the babies swear, when I, myself, don’t even swear. It was an unrealistic movie. In fact, it reminded me of Home Alone—where the child outsmarts the adults. It was a dumb movie, and I would not recommend it. It had its cute points, but was very unrealistic, and disgusted me.

Sarah Gonzales, age 15

What a waste! This movie wasted my time, my money and an opportunity to do something worthwhile with my kids! I read the top review and thought this might be a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon with my kids. What the guest reviewer referred to as small annoyances in this movie were actually huge, disturbing and ever present elements of this film.

I do not find topics such as cussing rebellious babies, kidnapping, child neglect and abuse to be heart-warming family fair. Not to mention that all of these offensive things are imbedded in one of the most boring and worst written movies I’ve seen in the past few years. It’s like somebody had 10 minutes to come up with an idea on how to use the dancing computer baby in a movie and this was the outcome.

So skip this one! Take your kids to the zoo or to a museum instead!

Betty, age 41