Baby Geniuses

1999 "Think innocent. Think helpless. Think again. Naps are history."
2.6| 1h37m| PG| en
Details

BabyCo is the world's leading manufacturer in baby products. However, what the public doesn't know, is that Drs Kinder and Heep, two of its most brilliant scientists, are tirelessly working in complete secrecy to crack the indecipherable code to 'baby talk': a highly sophisticated language, and the key to the secrets of the universe. Before long, problems arise when mischievous Sly, the smartest of the toddlers, escapes confinement, bent on uniting all babies to free those trapped in the laboratory. Now, Kinder and Heep must find Sly before it is too late.

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Reviews

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever
Develiker terrible... so disappointed.
Supelice Dreadfully Boring
Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
burnadrenaline This movie is a bad one. The whole premise of the movie works a little bit better than I thought it would, but it is still a really dumb premise. So sly has enough physical dexterity to judo throw a grown man, do back-hand springs, and swing on ropes, but he does not have mastery over his own bowels? I know they're supposed to be advanced, but being a genius doesn't mean you're physically gifted in any way. I tried to imagine myself as a child when it came to the jokes, but they still were not funny. The mall scene is where this movie really starts to fall apart. The parents mix up their children at the mall but the two twins were wearing different outfits. Yes, I know that the mother acknowledges this but what are the chances that they would be dressed so similarly out of coincidence? I could have been generous and given this movie a 2,but I decided not to do that. The rest of it wasn't any worse than the Mario Brothers movie I wouldn't say, but one scene lead me to this conclusion. There is a scene in the mall where Sly hops inside of a baby carriage and a joke ABOUT SEX occurs between two babies. I know they're supposed to be "advanced" or whatever but that is completely and utterly awful. I feel like a should get a medal for sitting through this entire movie.
Rose Harvey YIKES. There is nothing good or likable in this whole film. Nothing. There is something so painful about bad comedy. When a movie tries to be funny, but is terrible at it, it makes you HURT. Baby Geniuses hurts.Let's start with the premise: Babies who are 'geniuses'. Well, there's your first problem. Babies are not smart. "Oh, but you just have to be imaginative and have suspension of disbelief" Blah, blah, blah, suspend yourself over a gorge, you supporter of horrible films. I'm the kind of person who can enjoy a ridiculous premise. I loved Babe, and I readily accepted the premise of sentient farm animals. Do not tell me that I'm just too cynical to appreciate a goofy movie. No, the problem lies in centering your movie around the idea that not only do babies speak perfect English to each other, not only are they incredibly smart, not only can they flip around and do stunts, but they forget it all when they turn two. Freaking HUH?!? That makes no sense. It doesn't even make MOVIE sense. And the whole nudge-wink at the audience that babies just keep up the pretense around adults- OH PLEASE. So, babies crap their pants, wander around blank-faced into furniture, and obsessively chew on my hair or car keys every time I'm around, but they're secretly super-duper smart ninjas? No.Another problem with this should be readily obvious to anyone who respects acting: Babies cannot act. It's at best awkwardly cute. But, in most movies (especially GOOD movies), scenes with children are minimal and designed with a children's limitations in mind. The audience will tolerate a few seconds of little Billy reading off his cue card before running off the stage back to his mother, and everyone can go back to enjoying the scene. But this is a movie of nothing but that! So while the movie is trying to set up these kid characters as smug, intelligent, witty spies, all anyone with half a brain is seeing is awful CG mouths and lame dubbed in lines pasted over a drooling, completely-oblivious toddler. It's not cute or funny.And the terrible computer effects are one of the many things that makes this movie INCREDIBLY dated. Remember how awkwardly shoe-horned special effects were into every 90's film? Baby Geniuses seems to be an exercise in studios pandering to people who are so amused by special effects, that it doesn't matter how poorly done they are. The baby effects are TERRIBLE. The mouths just kind of wriggle around out of place on the babies faces, and all of the "action" scenes look about as real as the spaceships in Plan 9 From Outer Space. I have a vehement loathing for the scene that was quite obviously created to be put in EVERY TRAILER: the Saturday Night Fever parody where one of the babies disco dances in the trademark white suit. Not once do the body or face of this character seem like they have any connection to each other whatsoever. It's not well done, it's not funny, it's just lazy and can't even pull off a cheap laugh correctly.As for the script? I'm going to be as lazy as the screenwriters for this one: It sucked and was bad and I hate it.This movie was made to cash in on one of the most easy to pander to groups imaginable: Families. When you have kids, your sense of humor turns to crap. Yes, I know all of you are already arguing, but kindly stop. To an extent, I understand why people (especially moms) suddenly become unfunny after you have kids: They take over your life, and all that is in it. For a time, you will be forced to watch what they watch, listen to the jokes they tell, and generally alter the way you talk and behave around them. That's just a part of being a parent. It's only logical that after being exposed to all of their content you would eventually build a tolerance to it, maybe even develop an appreciation for it. Maybe some of you were unfunny to begin with. But there it is.Baby Geniuses was made for families. Specifically, the average, unfunny ones that find only the most bland, dated, and cutesy crap enjoyable. Every joke and moment was crafted for them. This movie is basically every thing my grandmother would find hilarious. I could practically imagine her excitedly repeating the repulsive "diaper gravy" """joke""" and thinking it's hysterical. The Austin Powers quote made me want to send every network consultant to bottom of the ocean. It so perfectly encapsulates what this film is. It's a template for every "funny" scene in this horrible film: Baby does something babies do not normally do + probably a baffled adult somewhere + baby uses slang or quotes something currently famous. The Austin Powers joke doesn't even make sense within the context of the scene, they just threw it in there because oh look, the baby is talking like Austin Powers, isn't that just hilarious????? To sum up. This movie has mom humor, it's not well made, and anyone giving it ten stars should not be trusted EVER. And no, I'm not just saying that because I only like "mature" films with violence. I LIKE a lot of kids media. I think babies are adorable when they AREN'T being scripted to be so. Hell, I have LaLa-freaking-loopsy on my DVR right now. So don't tell me I'm just a grumpy adult who can't stand innocence and silly fun. I just can't stand movies made with such calculated marketing as this, and so poorly done to boot.If you want to see an enjoyable kid-friendly movie, watch Babe. Or Toy Story. Or Willy Wonka. Mrs. Doubtfire. Harry Potter. Or really ANYTHING BUT THIS MOVIE. There ARE kid-friendly movies out there, and some of them ARE well-made. It doesn't have to be a trade-off, I promise.
rcolgan Well, if you're reading this you've already read the title of the film. Do you honestly need anymore to tell you how bad this film is? Just in case you weren't tipped off by the title, it sucked. But in fairness how do you make that premise work? Baby Geniuses is never going to be the next Citizen Kane any time soon is it. It sounds more like a writer wanted to make his child into a movie star and used this film as an excuse. I largely watched it because I had a morbid curiosity to see it. It was that same kind of curiosity that makes me wonder just what it would feel like to put my hand on an open flame. I knew I would go through pain but it will give me something to talk about to you psychiatrist. Just like any film, this does have a plot. A dumb plot, but a plot none the less. It follows the premise that all babies are born with intelligence far beyond that of any adult, but that they lose this intelligence when they get older. (I said it had a plot, I did not say that it made sense…) In one evil lab then they are doing tests to prove that babies can talk by separating twins with one being raised in a lab and one being raised in a regular home environment but are never allowed to meet as it would tamper the experiment. But through the power of bad story telling the child escapes and the wrong twin is brought back to the lab. From this premise alone I begin to wonder what producer saw this script and actually wanted to spend money to make it. As it turns out it's Steven Paul, who is also the writer of the film and the same producer who helped us see Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. He seems to specialise in films that must be trying to be bad. But the problem is that his films are not "so bad they're funny" where you laugh because of how stupid the film is. Instead they're just very unpleasant films to watch. In fact, watching this film I didn't laugh once. Not once. It seems to have confused the idea of being annoying with that of being funny. Otherwise I would have no idea of why they would put so much noise of baby giggling in the film. When it's your child giggling you may enjoy it because it's your child, but on screen it is a hair pulling annoyance for all ages.Added to this is that the film is also very creepy, with the babies lip syncing in this being comparable to the last Twilight film (not quite as creepy as that one but we're in the same area of creepiness). And that isn't the only off putting element of this film. When you watch it then you have to witness the awkwardness of extreme close ups, a baby dancing like he was in a 70's film and terrifying giant robot mechanic babies. For the most part a lot of the film could probably be cut out of the film and put into a horror movie, because I certainly felt closer to being frightened then I was to laughing. Another annoying thing that this film has is Christopher Lloyd. In the film he is neither good nor bad. But I know Lloyd and he is capable of doing so much more than some of the garbage films he's done. The thing is this isn't even the worst film he's been, also appearing in Foodfight and Piranha 3d. I'm guessing he gets paid for it, but he's Christopher Lloyd god damn it! He's the Russian who tried to kill Anastasia! The scientist who created time travel! The killer who framed Roger Rabbit! He can play so many memorable roles, but keeps wasting his talent on films that are beneath him! He's a great actor and I can only hope that he will stop choosing such awful films...But Lloyds presence in the film is not the most upsetting thing. The saddest part about this film is that, adjusted for inflation, it earned over 50 million at the box office. People paid money to see this in a cinema. I get watching a film to laugh at how bad it is, but I really question the human race as a species when in a month where films like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Analyze this come out people pay this much money to see a film like this. Worse yet because it did well at the box office, this film got a sequel. Yes, we live in a world where Dredd is a standalone film and Baby Geniuses gets a sequel. I have yet to see Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, but somehow people say it is worse than the first. But I'm getting off track, so I'll leave you with this warning. This film was painful to watch and exists for no other reason than to be creepy and annoying. And if you have a twisted mind and get a kick out of listening to babies scream and laugh for an hour and a half then this could be your film. But if not, the only way you could possibly gain pleasure from this is by mocking it.
michael-kamison Babies and film have a widely celebrated history together. One has to look no further than the 1989 opus, Look Who's Talking, and subsequent trilogy, to see how dynamic the formula translates to film. Ten years later, this breathtaking film was released. Baby Geniuses is just that: a genius work of film starring babies. From the hilarious in-your-face comedy styling of triplet actors Leo, Myles, and Gerry Fitzgerald, to the haunting performance as the Cruella-Deville-inspired villain Dr. Elena Kinder, played by the venerated Kathleen Turner.I'll admit I was skeptical. When I embarked on my initial viewing, I had certain preconceived notions about the nature of babies and their intellect that hindered my enjoyment. After my third or fourth screening, I was hooked. It's all based on the ancient belief that children are born with advanced conceptions of the universe that are lost by the time they enter into the adult world. This long-held belief by many Eastern religions has been shunned and avoided in film for decades. Baby Geniuses, at its heart a social film about the nuclear family and child slavery, confronts the issue head on. This fearless script, endlessly researched, jumps from the actors mouths and rattles the viewer to their core. What begins as an interesting piece of humorous science fiction, ends with a death-defying, heart-pounding final scene as actor Peter MacNicol, who performs all of his own stunts in the film, dangles from the rope of a helicopter—every second ascending, every second pulling him from a safe landing – a phobia that millions of Americans struggle with day-to-day. I should also mention this film's ahead-of-it's-time visual effects. With limited technology at their disposal, seeing that production was completed in 1998, the team of computer animation experts were able to truly wow me with the babies' seamlessly advanced dexterity and speech. I'm not typically one to conjecture on movie magic and try to decode how certain shots were pulled off, but I do believe that they must have used some sort of puppets on strings and then digitally replaced the heads of the characters, specifically in the now famous John Travolta homage scene. The results are spectacular and will leave audience's 100 years from now scratching their heads at just how they were able to pull this off. The film is a fun, energetic, twisted baby comedy-thriller that will be revered for generations to come. A landmark accomplishment. Run, don't crawl, to go see Baby Geniuses.