Child In Charge

In The Boss Baby, infants do corporate battle against puppies, and everybody wins.

- David Walters

“Leaders are made; they are not born,” Vince Lombardi once famously lied. Some leaders are born—newborn, in fact. They wear tiny power suits, tote tiny briefcases, and get more done before nap time than most people attempt in an entire day. They may not have fine motor skills, primary teeth, or full bladder continence, but the managerial talent and corner-office ambition is baked right in. Must you crawl before you walk in the business world? Sure, if you want to be the oldest senior vice president in play group.

The Boss Baby, the latest animated feature from DreamWorks Animation SKG, directed by Tom McGrath (Madagascar), is told from the perspective of Tim Templeton (voiced by Miles Bakshi), an imaginative 7-year-old and delightfully unreliable narrator. Sizing up the motivations of a new sibling (Alec Baldwin) who arrives one day by taxi, Tim sees him as a pint-size corporate raider, staging a hostile takeover of the household, which is bound to involve serious top-down restructuring and the reallocation of parental love and attention. As the baby later confirms to Tim with the cool ruthlessness of any chief executive officer justifying downsizing: “The numbers just don’t add up.”