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Enfants terrible
>> Baby Geniuses--look who's talking by MATTHEW HAYS
It may sound original, but the bottom line is this film is a cross between 101 Dalmations and the Look Who's Talking movies. Employing the same technology used to such endearing ends in Babe, the infants in Baby Geniuses appear to be discussing all sorts of high-minded things. But the comparisons with the talking pig end there. What Babe had in spades was a clever, biting script, one which made the film delightful to audiences of any age group. Baby Geniuses goes for the lowest common denominator--pleasing only the most nondiscriminating of children--with running gags about "diaper gravy" and (are you sitting down?) the film's highlight, when the babes hypnotize Dom DeLuise, commanding him to pick his nose. Now that's comedy! The suspense in the film has Kathleen Turner (in the Cruella De Vil role) secretly corralling her own herd of baby geniuses in hopes of harvesting their brains to make more money. (Christopher Lloyd, apparently on some kind of roll hot on the heels of the release of My Favorite Martian, plays Turner's evil assistant.) The casting of the babies themselves is noteworthy. The press kit describes the genius infants as "prodigies born with the wisdom of the ages, passed down from generation to generation, genetically imprinted on their DNA." In what we can only hope is an unintentional slight, the pack are played entirely by a lily-white cast, giving the film a certain Nazi veneer. What Baby Geniuses purports to say about ageism (yes, the press kit claims that theme, too) is undermined by the casting of Turner herself. Here, she is handed one of the few roles Hollywood studio films appear to allow for women over 45: the ruthless, corporate-climbing, money-hungry bitch. In a role tailor-made for Faye Dunaway in the years when her career was slipping, Turner's turn in this film says less about overlooked youth and more about cinema's twisted attitude towards women and age than Baby Geniuses' filmmakers will ever know. Baby Geniuses opens Friday, March 12
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The latest family-oriented film to be generated by a Hollywood studio is certainly an achievement in special effects. The premise is wrapped around the notion that a select group of babies are born with superintelligence, making them--well, geniuses. They speak in their own special language amongst themselves, and while they can understand each other, adults can't understand them.