Baby Geniuses.

Review #2149: Baby Geniuses. 

Cast: 

Kathleen Turner (Dr. Elena Kinder), Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Heep), Peter MacNicol (Dan Bobbins), Kim Cattrall (Robin Bobbins), Dom DeLuise (Lenny), Ruby Dee (Margo), with Leo, Gerry and Myles Fitzgerald (Sylvester "Sly" & Whit; voices by Miko Hughes), and Kyle Howard (Dickie/Ice Pick) Directed by Bob Clark (#020 - A Christmas Story, #679 - Black Christmas, #1055 - Porky's, #1854 - My Summer Story)

Review: 

"We wanted to go for a more realistic presentation of the concept." - Bob Clark.

Oh no, Bob Clark. This was the guy who did horror such as Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972) and Black Christmas (1974) before getting to do comedy/dramas such as Tribute (1980). After that, every film of his seems to remind one of a rollercoaster, as for every sleeper-turned-classic such as A Christmas Story (1983)...there was a litany of films that went down the road of audience appreciation such as the following: Porky's (1981 - hit, for better or worse), Porky's II: The Next Day (1983 - hit, somewhat), Rhinestone (1984 - the odd flop), Turk 182 (1985 - flop), From the Hip (1987 - flop), Loose Cannons (1990 - flopped harder), My Summer Story (1994 - little-seen flop), I'll Remember April (1999 - ???)...and then this. The involvement of Bob Clark with what became this film started in 1994. Clark ran into Jon Voight when attending a play and heard about a script that Voight wanted to do with his company that he had formed with Steven Paul in Crystal Sky Productions; Paul came up with the initial concept because he saw two babies communicating to each other once. This script (with multiple writers having gone through it) involved babies. While the script didn't look great to Clark (it involved portals called "Baby World"), he was interested in the short film he was shown involving babies sitting around in a meeting like they were executives (i.e., morph technology). Clark led the charge for a shift in the script that honed to the corporate angle because the other script seemed less "fresh." Of course, Clark had every reason to be nervous with the effects, but Babe (1995) certainly cooled fears a bit when it came to morphing. The effects when it came to the babies fell to the hands of Creative Special Effects when it comes to lips and mouths (alongside other stuff like natural head movements) for the babies for, well, conversation. By default, the CGI is a pioneer of some sort when it came to mouth movement, with credit of course going to babies...hitting their marks along with the use of a 15-year-old little person and a young gymnast for dancing and karate moves. Would you be surprised to hear that the film had a dubious release history? It was first planned for a release in Christmas of 1997 before incomplete effects meant a new target of 1998 and then 1999, and there was even the possibility of just shuttering the film as a Columbia TriStar Home Video release in the direct-to circuit before the movie slithered onto theaters in March of 1999, which managed to garner marginal attention from audiences. Five years later, Clark returned to direct a sequel with Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004), now with Voight serving as a star to go with Paul writing the screenplay and serving as a producer. Somehow, that film has a much worse reputation than this film, and it happened to be the last film directed by Clark, who died in 2007 at the age of 67.

Getting kids (age 5-9, apparently) rather than adult voices to voice the babies (such as say, Look Who's Talking [1989]) is probably the least sad thing of the whole thing. What could possibly invite you to waste 95 minutes on a movie that never succeeds in every joke that is attempted? If there was a God, I do not believe that watching babies walk and talk would be high on the priority list. You might as well call it the film most likely to be thought of as having no soul in it. The people who made this film probably did not think much of the film either during or after production, but that doesn't give an excuse for this being one of the worst things I have ever seen. Hell, it shouldn't even be called a film, it should be put in a special garbage can that you would put expired food products in. You might think, oh, well, Monster a Go-Go (1965) is filled with more inconsistencies and worse acting. Well, maybe, but that has the label of being made in weirder circumstances of "make the best out of the footage", what kind of excuse does this Hollywood slop have? Absolutely none. Clark and his team probably thought it was one of those things you can put on for the kids and enjoy, but no, they did not. I can't tell who to feel sorrier for when it comes to being present in such a bad feature here, Lloyd (future voice in Foodfight!) or DeLuise (guy who appeared in past junk such as Sextette, and The Magic Voyage dub); Lloyd's most dubious scene might as well be his second one, when he accesses a computer that only is there to deliver exposition to the audience and serve no other purpose. Well, okay, maybe Turner, because she has more time than each actor and doesn't even get to chew scenery. Imagine my shock, no scene chewing in a movie that has less life on it than the planet Mars. Even if you want to term MacNicol and Cattrall as just sleepwalking through their roles, why should they be given slack? It's easy to say folks are mailing it in, but, well, yea, they are mailing it in as if this was a direct-to-video production, complete with little motivation to do much of anything. They repeat one line four times in quick succession and later do a repeat of a gag where an adult gets tricked into getting hit in the beans after talking about it. The voices coming out of those babies were never going to work with how it looked because it just isn't a useful effect that you would want to see for very long. It is a gag that has run amok for what might as well count for anti-comedy. Truly, this was a sad experience to sit through, because it means that Bob Clark may be one of few people who directed both a vaunted classic and a horrendously awful feature in the same career. Avoid, unless you like garbage.

Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars.

Next: The Lonely Lady.

Redux: Ghostbusters II.

Redux #031: Ghostbusters II.

Cast: 

Bill Murray (Peter Venkman), Dan Aykroyd (Raymond "Ray" Stantz), Sigourney Weaver (Dana Barrett), Harold Ramis (Egon Spengler), Rick Moranis (Louis Tully), Ernie Hudson (Winston Zeddemore), Annie Potts (Janine Melnitz), Peter MacNicol (Janosz Poha), Kurt Fuller (Jack Hardemeyer), David Margulies (Mayor Lenny Clotch), Harris Yulin (Judge Stephen Wexler), with Wilhelm von Homburg (Vigo the Carpathian [voiced by Max von Sydow]), and Janet Margolin (the Prosecutor) Directed by Ivan Reitman (#026 - Ghostbusters)

Review: 

"I’m really proud of the second movie — I just saw it again and I really liked it. It didn’t get particularly good reviews. It was successful, financially, but less successful than the first one. I pushed it into a much more personal story."

Look, the original Ghostbusters (1984) made oodles of money. Obviously, there was a movement to make a second movie, but timing really is everything when it comes to movies. You had to make a movie that Reitman, Ramis, Aykroyd, and Murray all wanted to do, since they were reluctant to do a second movie to begin with, although Columbia Pictures was pretty much on board. Murray had not acted in a movie for a couple years (in a starring role anyway) after the release of the movie, since he believed that the success of Ghostbusters would forever be his biggest accomplishment. Aykroyd and Ramis return to do the script, although it was the former who wrote the first draft, as was the case with the original. Aykroyd apparently wrote his initial script involving a kidnapping to Scotland with fairy rings and underground civilizations (even he would admit that it was really too far out), but the part about things happening underground was retained. It was Ramis that contributed to the idea of negative human emotions having consequences (i.e. mood slime) alongside an idea he had once had for a horror story involving an infant who suddenly woke up with adult agility and focus. While the movie took five years to finally come out, Ghostbusters did find its way onto television first with The Real Ghostbusters, which ran from 1986 to 1991 (which is why one sees a bit more Slimer, since that character was apparently a big thing on that show). Naturally, there were re-shoots. Reitman noticed when watching the test version that the last 25 minutes apparently seemed like "a horrible death". Test audiences thought that the associated elements of the slime alongside Vigo the Carpathian weren't really connected or that the conflict was, well, a conflict hard enough for the Ghostbusters. Reshoots were done to try and strengthen the climax alongside cutting certain sequences. These added scenes include: a ghost train scene that goes through Winston, a scene with severed heads, and a fire that nearly takes down two of the Ghostbusters after they try to develop photographs of Vigo. The movie was released on June 16, 1989, to moderate but not spectacular audience results; Aykroyd tried to make a script for a third movie (one idea sent them to a hellish version of Manhattan), but Murray was not particularly interested, and multiple scripts came and went before plans to just do a reboot came in 2016.

 

I'll be honest, I have only seen the movie three times (once in 2011, the other one in 2019, and today). There just has to be a reason beyond just saying "it's just not as good as the original" for this. I can't say that the movie has exactly warmed further in my heart when it comes to looking at a movie that was released on June 16, 1989 (Reitman wanted to release it on the 23rd but decided to ask for the week beforehand because a certain movie was being released that same day). You may remember that the original 1984 film was a capable comedy that just happened to have good effects and a solid cast that (pardon the cliche) had heart to its proceedings with a well-developed story. Now, one has a movie that thinks its first best conceit it to throw the Ghostbusters right in the dump and build themselves up again, especially considering the whole "we saved your sorry asses from Gozer and you just decided to sue us like a bunch of losers" that sticks in my mind. Hell, I would have gladly accepted a plot-line that sees the other looming threat to a business besides authorities: competition. Hell, forget "restraining orders" for two seconds, who wouldn't want to try and improve what had been done? But nah, let's just take the skeleton of the original and take out a few parts to reincorporate at will, right down to a scene midway through the movie that takes the jail sequence from the first one and just replaces it with a mental institution. Dennis Muren was tasked to supervise the special effects as Reitman was not particularly happy with the work of Richard Edlund's Boss Film Studios for the first film. It didn't help make the process of doing Vigo faster, since it took them months to find a design likable enough to shoot. The effects do take a bit more of the show, for better or worse. On the one hand, the 108 minutes do pass pretty well in building interest for the aspects of slime and Vigo in the slightest of creeping terror. I did roll my eyes a tad less during the Statue of Liberty sequence and I did at least think the resolution with the crowd helped contrast the fact that one has to see a floating head for the final final shot of Vigo before he hits the dust. On the other hand, it is clearly not as funny as the original in general lines because of the fact that the filmmakers wanted to soften the image of their title characters to seemingly match the cartoon series, which results in a sitcom hodgepodge that a cynic would say has "castrated" the characters; I'm not saying, "screw you, kids", I just think it is a little silly to try and balance the needs of a movie and an animated series designed for kids when just making a balanced movie is a bit less convoluted. True, Murray is still the undoubtable highlight of the movie, one that has some of the same wit and spontaneity from before, even if he finds himself paired with Weaver (and a baby, ha ha ha) just as much as with the main group (the TV show scene is probably the highlight). Weaver does fine with the material provided in warm timing. Ramis is still the same wry guy from before, which goes with the energetic Aykroyd, which generally works out for a few chuckles and exposition that varies in engagement. Hudson, the sentimental favorite in audience surrogates and underrated presences has probably the same number of things to do as compared to from before (marginal), but he carries well among the scenes he usually is part of with Ramis/Aykroyd (this is one of those movies where you only see all four of a group for select moments until the end). I did appreciate MacNicol more than I had remembered, since he plays a stooge worthy of all the chuckles in offbeat quality that makes an interesting pairing with Weaver or for the climax. It should be noted that Von Homburg (a German boxer-turned-actor with a split lip) didn't know his voice was dubbed by von Sydow (who did his stuff in a day) until the premiere of the movie - at least he looks the part in off-putting terror, and von Sydow provides the right voice for it. Fuller may be playing an imitation of William Atherton from the first movie, but he at least makes a go of it in smarmy attribution to pair against the beleaguered and sorely lacking Marguiles (of course, Yulin gets to ham up a judge for a time, so all's even). As a whole, it comes together as a weird prediction of future movie sequels/reboots of the current age that take certain aspects from the original to include references that may or may not do anything particularly new with things (kind of like Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) in how each are average).

Reitman blamed the movie not being as successful on the climate of films released around the time of June 1989...such as Batman (1989), released one week after this movie; Reitman described his movie as a "friendly, more personal, sort of character-based Ghostbusters" as one that seemed like a disappointment to audiences toned to something different; of course, his movie features people being so negative that they turn New York City into a cesspool of slime along with a Rasputin pastiche getting a guy to kidnap a baby to get out of a painting and possibly become a great terror. 1989 was an interesting year for sequels: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Karate Kid Part III, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Lethal Weapon 2, Back to the Future Part II, you get the idea. As a whole, the movie is fairly average in all the ways you never would have seen coming five years ago from a movie as beloved as the original was, one is carried heavily by effects and a little bit of cast magic that proves it is hard to capture the best essence of moviemaking twice. It is average and a disappointment, but it is far from being a complete waste not worth watching at least once, which means that Reitman and company did at least succeed somewhere down the line.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.