THE BOSS BABY

THE BOSS BABY (vt BOSS BABY). Tom McGrath, dir. Michael McCullers, script; Marla Frazee (based on the book by). USA: DreamWorks Animation (production) / 20th Century Fox Film Corporation (US and most of world distribution), 2017.

Animated family comedy with some satire, relevant here for its visual answer to the question, Where do babies come from? Not how babies are made — the protagonist child thinks his parents' explanation for that (never specified) is gross — but where they come from, which is Baby Corp. And Baby Corp. is imaged in the great tradition of the classic opening shot from King Vidor's THE CROWD (1928). and has as a variety of objective correlative for its operation not the conception, gestation, or birth of babies but a figurative delivery. The delivery comes via a huge (slightly Rube Goldberg) apparatus that combines a roller coaster with train switching and pinball flippers and has a crucial decision-stop where the baby is tickled. Normal babies who laugh are born into families; babies that don't laugh go into Management. However, on a special undercover mission the Boss Baby does arrive to join a family, travelling by taxi.

RDE, Initial Compiler,07/IV/17