The Boss Baby

"Caught between a not-as-clever version of Pixar’s Inside Out and a way-more-original take on Warner Bros’ Storks, The Boss Baby might be the biggest surprise of the year. By using the imagination of seven-year-old Tim, the film reinvents that age-old question every child eventually asks: where do babies come from? Turns out, it’s a corporate decision that splits new-borns into ‘family’ and ‘management’. Yes, it’s bizarre, but to a kid, it’s no less bizarre than babies sprouting from cabbage patches or arriving via bird couriers (something the film happily points out)."

"The buoyant chemistry between Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Bell keeps this slight comedy afloat in the face of a thin storyline and an uneven tone. In full-on firecracker mode, the limber McCarthy is clearly enjoying herself revisiting a character she first developed in her days as an improv performer with the famed Groundlings troupe."

""The Boss Baby" still feels standard issue and a wee bit tiresome."

"Its snappy, pop-culture-referencing script feels workshopped to death."

"It's a movie whose story is aimed at the siblings of newborns - the 8-and-under crowd, more or less. They'll follow the plot for most of the way; they just might be puzzled by their accompanying parent's reactions. "What's so funny, Dad?""

"What is clear is that The Boss Baby is a concept that doesn't work, whether it's taken to be aimed at actual children or at the subgroup of adults who might get fleeting amusement from an allusion to Baldwin's role in Glengarry Glen Ross."

"Not even a mealymouthed attempt at political satire is ultimately enough to rescue "The Boss Baby" from its pervasive sourness and paucity of imagination."

"Words like "inventive" and "inspired" are very rarely applied to the parade of cookie-cutter animated features that pass through the multiplex each year, but The Boss Baby proves a refreshing exception."

"All novelty value mined from Baldwin putting blunt business-speak in the mouth of a cute little bubba is spent very quickly here indeed."