BABY GENIUSES
The film was directed by Bob Clark (Porky's) and written by Steven
Paul and Francisca Matos. It stars Kathleen Turner as Dr. Elena Kinder,
a power-hungry baby products mogul and inventor of a revolutionary new method
of child-rearing. Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd, made up to look exactly like
Lenin) is her henchman, and Peter MacNicol and Kim Cattrall are Dan and
Robin Bobbins, a sappily-married couple who run a conventional daycare center.
But the real stars are a set of toddler triplets (Leo, Myles, and Gerry
Fitzgerald) who portray a pair of twins caught up in Dr. Kinder's evil plot,
and a slew of other tots playing cutesy back-up.
Dr. Kinder believes that babies are born with complete knowledge of the
meaning of life, and that their jabbering is really the dead language of
cuneiform. After they have a few years under their diapers, they "cross
over" — they lose their smarts and become the ignorant little
tykes we know and love. She wants to find a way to download their wisdom
before the crossover, and therefore corner the market on baby-related merchandise.
Central to her plot is a pair of twins separated at birth, Sylvester
and Whit (the Fitzgerald trips, voiced by Miko Hughes). "Sly"
has spent his entire young life at Babyco, Kinder's vast underground research
center, while Whit is in the care of the Bobbinses. Kinder plans to prove
that her method of baby care is superior, and Sly and his fellow "geniuses"
are carefully monitored as they sit around and discuss the human experience.
But Sly escapes, gets switched with Whit, and the two conspire to bring
down Kinder's empire, aided by the sure-fire mix of adult stupidity and
infant resourcefulness.
Though the kids are cute, the movie is not. What is supposed to be a
story championing infantile charm reduces the little actors to the role
of ventriloquist's dummies, fitted with fakey, computer-animated mouths
which spout clever things beyond their years. There are recycled pieces
of film and soundtrack, slow- and fast-motion used to betray the audience,
and, of course, the ever-present VIOLENCE. This film borrows heavily from
the Home Alone series, but it doesn't even have the interesting adults:
Turner and Lloyd are remarkably unremarkable; MacNicol and Cattrall turn
the stomach.
Watching a 2-minute TV commercial of an infant dancing or saying something "grown-up" may be kind of cute. Watching 1½ hours of it is almost unbearable. *½