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.[1]

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[2] from King Vidor's THE CROWD (1928).[3] 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